


Here to Stay | TMNT

by Ace_the_Great



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2012)
Genre: Blood and Violence, Cross-Posted on Wattpad, Cross-Posted on deviantArt, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Mental Instability, Non-Canon Relationship, Originally Posted on FanFiction.Net, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Single Parents
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-01
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-04-26 11:22:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 10
Words: 41,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14401101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ace_the_Great/pseuds/Ace_the_Great
Summary: The "Mutants of America" Act lets mutants come out and live in American society for a change. Four turtle brothers and their father take part in this radical movement, after years of hiding away in the sewers. But like every other change put into place in this country, there will always be those against them...





	1. Acceptance

**Author's Note:**

> This fanfiction started in the late summer of 2014 off a lazy idea my friend and I came up with but she couldn't get onto paper. Earlier chapters are years old and have not been revised since their original publication date, but we work on this together in an attempt to fix typos, etc. (Please excuse early content, as they are years upon years older than what we make now.) Since it's creation, it's spread to multiple platforms before finally making its way here. It has a tendency now to remind many people of Zootopia, or a thought they may have once had in a fleeting moment, but luckily, this got the opportunity to come first. I hope you enjoy.

Leo nervously drummed his fingers on the table beside him. He was waiting right for the second that door would open, and once it did, he was sure he would have a heart attack. This was the moment of his life he never thought would happen. He was in a public building, and people weren't running away. They weren't screaming, trying to attack him, nothing. It was such a strange feeling, humans would smile at him when he walked down the streets. Sure, some stared in horror, but a lot more smiled and waved and took photos. He could go into a pizzeria and sit down for once to order. He could see the city in the daytime, he could breathe in the fresh morning air, and he could cross the street without hiding in the shadows.

He was free.

Leo closed his eyes and took a deep breath in through his nose, and out his mouth. "I can do this..." He whispered softly. He repeated the phrase again and again to calm down. This was a massive part of the rest of his life, and he couldn't botch it up. He was confident though. If all the other mutants could do it, so could he. He was no different than they were, was he?

The door squealed open and Leo's vision snapped up. Out stepped a tiger mutant, a female, who hurriedly rushed down the hall to the main lobby, a grin slapped across her face. Her tail swept across the marble tile as she left, kicking up dirt that others had left behind. He watched her leave, curious, but immediately looked back into the office right as the lady was motioning and calling for him to enter. She had long dark hair and sparkling brown eyes, and she welcomed him with a smile. This would be his interviewer for the next half hour. He took a shaky breath, then let himself confidently stride inside. The room was spacious, and right behind the lady hung a large American flag, tattered and worn around the edges from age. On her bookshelves were framed pictures of what he assumed was her family. She took a sip out of a coffee thermos and typed something into her personal computer, probably taking note of the last interviewed mutant, or finishing an e-mail to a co-worker. Leo sat in the red cushioned chair bouncing slightly. This chair was way too small for him, he was afraid it was going to break.

He glanced over at the wall clock that hung on the wall beside him. It was 10:00 AM on the dot, not a second earlier. He took another deep breath, fidgeting slightly with his hands. His mind started to drift off to what other things he would do once he left. Lunch...he was getting kind of hungry, he had skipped breakfast because he couldn't seem to find an appetite over his anxious gut. Italian food sounded really good. He wondered if he could find a good Italian place nearby. He wanted to pull his phone out and search for one, but that would send the wrong signal to the woman in front of him. He had to seem patient and composed.

The clicking of the keyboard made him want to ask her to stop, it was raising the level of his nervousness to a snapping point. She paused, and he sighed in relief internally. She continued again though, and all of his muscles tensed as a result. Lunch. He had been thinking about lunch, why not think about it again? He sighed, this was a hopeless battle. Maybe Mikey could get calmed down by the thought of food, but Leo couldn't. He rubbed the back of his hand and looked out the window under the wall clock. He was on the fourth floor, and he noticed a little morning dove strutting across the ledge. He smiled and watched as its head jerked around in search of its other winged friends. It took off right as his interviewer got up and circled behind him to the door. Poor bird must've been scared really easily.

"What is your name?" The lady asked, shutting the door before she took a seat behind her desk again. Her hands were clasped in front of her and her wrists rested comfortably on the top of the desk. Leo cleared his throat and adjusted his neck tie. He couldn't believe he had decided to wear it. Back at the lair he had thought it looked great for the occasion. Maybe he could've dressed it down...he blinked, realizing he hadn't answered yet, and hurriedly responded.

"Leonardo Hamato in English."

"What would it be otherwise?" She asked, raising an eyebrow. There was a special tone in her voice when she asked it, but Leo couldn't quite describe it.

"Hamato Leonardo in Japanese, that's the technical order they use there. My father is Japanese, so he taught us to respond to...both." As the sentence went on he got quieter.

"I see." She nodded and brushed a loose hair behind her ear. She studied him curiously. "How old are you Mr. Hamato?"

"Ah, eighteen." He smoothly answered. It seemed awfully sad that this was the only question he felt tremendously smooth while answering.

"Fresh and bright eyed." She said. "Mr. Hamato, I'd like to congratulate you for making your appearance here today to be a part of this interview. I'm sure it must be an exciting time for you and your family."

Leo nodded, smiling hesitantly. "When I was younger my brothers and I would always joke about what we would do if we were humans, but we never expected this." He replied. She smiled and continued on.

"I'm sure. Let's start now please, you must answer the truth for all of the questions in this interview Mr. Hamato, do you understand? You may be denied citizenship or have it taken away if we find out." She said.

He nodded. "I understand." Hopefully she wouldn't ask any questions that would require him having to bend the truth. He decided to tell nothing but the truth anyway. Splinter had taught him better, and no secret was worth losing this.

"Good." The dark-haired lady gave a short nod and pulled a drawer open from one of the filing cabinets on her wall. She thumbed through the files, probably looking for his name he mused. Maybe she was checking his scores for the test he had taken a few weeks before. He had worked hard on that, Don and his brothers had studied for hours, even Mikey had given in to the boring task. They wanted this, and they wanted it bad.

She pulled out the file. He caught a glimpse of his name written in ballpoint ink on the flap as she pulled out some papers and scanned over them. "It says here you're fluent in both English and Japanese. When did you learn English?"

"I learned both languages at the same time ma'am, my father thought it would be valuable for us to understand both."

She nodded. "It says you, your father, and three brothers lived in the sewers for the majority of your time before the act passed?"

"Yes ma'am, that is true."

"When did you come outside into our world for the first time?"

"When my brothers and I were 15, so about three years ago, our father decided it was time to let us outside. We frequently came to the surface world after that, but only at night when nobody could see us. This was obviously before the act passed."

She didn't look up from the papers, her eyes just kept scanning over them. "I see. And it says that once you were on the outside world you used your skills in martial arts to stop criminals?"

"And an alien invasion several months later, yes." He nodded. She raised both eyebrows, then scanned over the forms again. No doubt she had found the proof on the text, because she wouldn't stop reading it over and over.

"Alien invasion? Like the one several years ago with the gigantic floating orb above the sky?"

"Exactly." He replied.

She whistled. "That is impressive. You were the leader of all four of your brothers in these missions, is that correct?"

"I was, my father chose me for that role."

"Would you say you did well in that role, Mr. Hamato?"

"Yes, I would."

There was a moment of silence as she kept looking over the forms. Leo was so nervous, his hands were shaking. He closed his eyes, mouthing out the calming phrase again and again. He was going to be fine. He never thought he would be in here at all. He was getting interviewed for citizenship. He was actually going to be an American, legally. He smiled at just the idea of it.

"Mr. Hamato, did your father give you any form of education?" She asked, raising one brow curiously.

"Actually, yes, you could say we were homeschooled."

"How would you describe the extent of your education?"

Leo didn't want to sound like he was stupid, but he also didn't want to take the chance of losing his citizenship. "Average." he answered. "Any other information we wanted we found from the internet."

"I see..." She nodded slowly. There was another long pause before she set the stack down. "Mr. Hamato, are you familiar with this act's technicalities?"

"Most of them." He replied.

"Recite them to me." She said, still flipping through the numerous pages in his forms. She didn't even look up for a second. Leo gulped and adjusted his tie again. Was he fidgeting too much? He had to get used to this...

"The 'Mutants of America' Act states that all mutants that apply and are accepted as citizens of the United States of America get the same rights as human citizens. They can hold a job, own a home, receive income, get married, and/or start a family."

She smiled and nodded. "Very good." She lay the stack of paperwork back in the file, then slid the folder back into its spot in the filing cabinet. She slammed the drawer with a large heave, then faced him once again. "It also seems that you've passed all of your intelligence tests with high enough scores to have a job here."

"That's great!" He smiled.

"Mr. Hamato, I do believe you have the perfect qualities for a citizen of the United States of America. You can become accepted tonight at the ceremony if you so wish."

Leo's heart leaped with joy, and he nearly knocked the chair down when he stood up. A grin was slapped across his face. "Really?" He exclaimed. She laughed lightly and nodded, and when she looked behind him she laughed harder. He ran his hand over his cheek. "Thank you! I'm ecstatic!" He laughed.

It was then that he realized that the chair was stuck to his shell, and he pried it off sheepishly, blushing a bright shade of red. He set the chair on the floor of the office with a loud thud, then then thanked the woman for her time. As he was walking out his mind filled with ideas of what he wanted to do now. He wanted to go eat first, Italian probably. Then he wanted to hop online and look for apartments that were open. Oh, but first he had to find a job! What kind of job would work for him...hmm...his mind buzzed with the idea of it.

Mr. Hamato...it sounds amazing...

"Excuse me, sir?" The lady called for him. He turned around, afraid he had done something wrong. She was holding out a small pack of papers. "The ceremony starts at around 7:00 PM tonight, not a second later. Be here on time."

"I will!" He nodded and hurried back to her. "Thank you so much!"

"This is some of the more specific technicalities in the act. I suggest you look over them and make sure that you understand everything to the best of your ability." She said. He took the stack, smiling brighter than a love crazy teenager, and thanked her once again. He opened the door and took a deep breath through his nose. Free. He was free. No more sewers, no more hiding in the shadows, he was absolutely free. Accepted into society for a change. It was so strange, walking around the part of the city they had been banned from before.

Leo sighed happily and continued down the long hall that led to the front entrance. He had never felt happier in his life, never, and he took great note of it. As he opened the doors and stepped out into the sunshine, he let the warmth of the sun shine down on his mutant skin without any shame. He was going to call himself an American now, and nobody could stop him. His mind began whirring again, with all the possibilities of what he could do now. But first, lunch. He hurried down the street, following the GPS on his phone to the nearest Italian pizzeria he could find. He was starving.

\----------------------------------

Donatello paced the hall anxiously, continually clearing his throat or running his hand across his cheek. Stress had been a part of his life countless times before, but never in this exact way. He had always formed dreams when he was younger. Dreams of things that he wanted to be. He knew that he was smart enough to be the next NASA engineer. He knew he had the same brilliant ideas that got Steve Jobs so far. He had once even thought of the chance that he might be able to work at the NSA as a professional computer scientist.

But he had always laughed at those dreams, thinking that he would forever be the geek of the little ninja squad his family was. He had accepted that freely, but now he actually had to think about life. He was going to get a job, own a living space that he didn't have to share with his annoying brothers...it was a head rush, but a really exciting one at that. He smiled at just the thought of it. He was awfully glad to be so smart, he was sure that he would be accepted into any job or college in a moment's notice. He had taken the test to get his high school diploma.

His intelligence had exceeded their expectations.

He chuckled, shaking his head as he thought of it. He was allowed to be a little air headed about the subject within the confines of his own mind. He let the topic drop though, he saw the door at the end of the hall open and his older brother Raph came rushing down the hall. "Hey, have you seen Mikey?" He asked, seemingly annoyed. Don gave a curious look.

"When have I ever known where Mikey is?"

"Look, we have exactly ten minutes to find him and get in that room, and you're gonna help me!" Raph grit his teeth and grabbed his brother by the arm. Don sighed and fought his grip, but was dragged down the hall anyway. The sound of his stumbling echoed through the building.

"You really don't need to drag me Raph." Donnie grumbled, shoving him away. He dusted off his arm and--even though he didn't want to--followed Raphael through the building in search of the youngest. "You do know that by heading this way we're heading to the staff only area of the building, right?"

"This is Mikey we're talking about!" Raph threw his hands in the air from frustration and kept going. Don paused and stretched his neck to look behind him.

"Okay, while you go get lost, I'm going to look somewhere actually useful." Don sighed and went off the opposite way. If Raph got lost and tried to pin it on him...Don rolled his eyes and turned back down the hall he came from. There were a lot of other mutants waiting in the room adjacent to it where the ceremony was going on, Mikey was probably drumming up a conversation with his new "buddies".

Surely enough, he opened the door to find Mikey excitedly telling a story to a small group of mutants. Among them were a dog-like mutant, a pigeon mutant, and six other assorted hybrids. They were laughing and opening their eyes wider with every sentence. Don smirked. If Mikey couldn't get a serious job he could always work as a traveling comedian. That might be his thing.

"The guy was huge! I named him myself too! Justin!" He proudly grinned, pointing his thumb at himself. One of the girls among the group giggled. "I'm awesome at naming stuff." He bragged. Don rushed back down the hall and called back down to Raph.

"Found him Raph! In the room!"

He came back into the room and listened to the rest of Mikey's story. Raph joined a few moments later. There were a few parts of the story that he exaggerated. Okay...more than a few. But they decided to let him have his glory. At five minutes till he took a few of their numbers into his phone at a speed anyone could marvel at. He was going to have a lot of friends. Lots of them.

Seats were filled within minutes, and all four brothers sat beside each other. Their serious side was turning on, even for Mikey, who normally couldn't sit still for more than a few minutes. Several humans came into the room and stood on the stage placed at the front. Raph's hands clenched into fists. He wouldn't say he was afraid. No, he was just ready for this to be over with already. He had things he wanted to talk care of, he needed to get his own apartment. No more dealing with his wacko brothers anymore, he was more than ready for it.

If only he knew exactly what it was he was going to do after this ceremony was over. He knew that he was going to have to find a place to live, but to do that he would need money. And to get money, he was going to need a job. Raph had never been good with people, and he was afraid that because of that, he wasn't going to find a job that would pay enough to support himself. He sighed and rolled his eyes when his youngest brother began bouncing in his place. Mikey was going to need to find a job that would let him release all of his wound up energy.

If Mike could even successfully hold a job.

One woman, obviously way over her 60's, stood before the chattering room and tapped on the small microphone clipped to the edge of the podium. The noise quieted down. "May I please ask for you to stand up so we can perform the Pledge of Allegiance?" She asked. She had a strong country accent, and she pursed her lips as they all stood. "Now, could I ask for you all to put your right hand over your heart, and say the pledge with me?" The room erupted into a chorus of different voices as the American flag was hoisted high above the woman's head by a military officer. The pledge finished with a brief applause.

"Good, you may now be seated." She said. The rustling and squeaking of chairs across the floor almost drowned out the sound of the speech the president started giving in a video being shown on a screen hanging on the back wall. Mikey was struggling to listen and stay calm, so he tapped his foot on the floor. Self control. He had to practice his self control...

The problem was, he was just so happy, he couldn't seem to keep any of his excitement inside. His mind was looping with what he wanted to do afterwards. His brothers had planned to have dinner once the process ended at Murikami-san's shop, just like old times. Just the thought of popping food in his mouth made him smile, and his eyes closed. Within moments, the entire speech being given by the old guy on the screen was completely drowned out by thoughts of food in Mikey's one track mind.

An elbow jabbed into his shoulder and he flinched. His eyes snapped open. Donnie had been a blessing just then by helping him to focus. Mikey looked back up at the screen. It was so hard to keep his mind on the speech. Ever since he had told his brothers about the idea of keeping him on track, they had either shoved or tapped him when he seemed to not be paying attention. Raph was more violent about the whole thing. Mikey was glad he was seated beside Donnie instead.

"I am proud to welcome you as a new citizen of this country." The president said. "May God bless you, and may God continue to bless the United States of America." The video faded into black and the room erupted into applause. A man, slightly overweight with thinning grey hair, took the podium with a stack of papers in his hands. He was grinning, and wore an American flag pin on the pocket of his shirt.

"I will now begin the calling of the names. Please come accept your certificate of citizenship at the podium as your name is called." He said.

Leo took a deep breath. Only a few more minutes and he could call himself an American. The anxiety was about to kill him, and Mikey's foot was tapping so fast it was like it would fly off and kill somebody. Leo let a deep breath out of his mouth just as Raph leaned over and whispered in his ear.

"Relax fearless, we're almost done."

"Lucille Greenhill." The man called out. A cheerful girl with feline ears and paws accepted the certificate with a grateful smile and returned to her seat, right beside Leo. Leo's heart skipped a beat. He cleared his throat and rubbed the sweat off his palms. "Leonardo Hamato."

He stood up and gracefully made his way across the room and up the stage. Feeling that paper in his hand...it was an indescribable feeling that Leo wouldn't trade for anything. He stepped off the stage right as the second oldest in their line was called to the stage.

"Raphael Hamato."

Raph hadn't ever really cared if he made it to the surface world as more than ninja staying in the shadows. At first he had hated staying in the shadows and hiding, but he had adapted to it. Ever since Congress had made this up though, Raph had found himself shoved out into the daylight with no clue what to do with himself. So as he took the paper in his hand and sat back down, he started to think about it. What was he going to do with his life? Because starting in a few minutes, it was going to matter.

"Donatello Hamato."

Don stood up and brushed off his knees. His mind buzzed with mixed thoughts. His whole life was starting now, everything, every passion, every dream, and just...he smiled. "Thank you." He took the paper and touched the ground again with a mind dripping with ideas.

"Michelangelo Hamato."

"That's me!" Mikey stood up and practically ran up the stage. His brothers, embarrassed to be affiliated with him, averted their eyes and shielded their faces. "Thanks, dude!" Mikey took the paper and swung off the stage, ninja style. He threw himself into his seat as a few of the others among the crowd laughed. It was a miracle he had passed any of those intelligence tests.

Five minutes later, the last mutant exited the stage. Once again the crowd stood, a few of them emotionally crying, others with faces of stone. Leonardo and his brothers, lined up in the second row from oldest to youngest as they had requested, kept solemn faces. However, on the inside, emotions ran rampant all around.

"We will now finish the ceremony by saying the Oath. Please read the words on the screen with me."

Leo, Raph, Don and Mikey all took a breath and started.

"I hereby declare, on oath, that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion."

"So help me God." 

 


	2. Independent

Michelangelo had spent two and a half years working as the lowly janitor of a grungy high school. He had worked late nights sweeping dust and scrubbing the floors, and worked early mornings washing away the puke of kids that had gotten sick during class. He couldn't say that he had enjoyed his job too much, his pay had been poor and his working hours were long and tiresome, but after those long two and a half years, he had finally been able to pay off the building he had bought, and had successfully earned a steady enough income to keep his apartment rented for a year. And now, as he zoomed down the city sidewalks on his new skateboard from the vendor, he couldn't help but grin.

He reached a long stretch of nothing but downhill riding, and he jumped up from his board, completed a flip, and hit the pavement with a solid thump. He laughed and cheered for himself as he glanced left and right at the blur that was his home city. Never in his life had he felt so truly alive.

He wore a scarf around his neck. Autumn was upon the city, and the few trees that stuck out from the concrete had already lost their leaves, naked in the cold breezes that tossed Mikey's balance to the side. He wobbled and fought the current of the air so he wouldn't crash into another taxi like he had last week. He wondered if he could find that taxi with the dent in the front. Then again, he knew, that many taxis had dents in the front, and most of them probably more than one.

He jumped over a crack in the sidewalk that he had learned to avoid on his route downtown, where all the major businesses of today were. Not very major, but major where he and his brothers lived. Now moved out of the slums, they were in a slightly nicer portion of the city, but not entirely without its own filth and grime. Mikey flipped his feet into the air and did a handstand as he gripped the sides of his board. He laughed and crossed the crosswalk like that, no doubt getting a few curious or bewildered glances.

"Later, dudes!" He called out, then flipped back onto his feet again.

Man, did it feel good to be a New Yorker.

Mikey swerved around the corner of the block, nearly hitting a fire hydrant. Every time he swung around that corner he nicked his thigh on it and stumbled into the street, but this time he had been an inch or so off from it. He smiled. His luck couldn't get any better, except for the fact that he was only two minutes away from the best job in the world. He could see the top of one of the glowing letters in his sign from here, and he pushed off harder and harder, wishing he could just get faster. Another turn around the street and his heartbeat jumped further.

"Almost there!" He cheered, pushing his foot on the pavement with increasing speed.

With a quick kick of the foot on the back of his board he braked just as he was about to run smack into the glass door of his own business. He yanked the key chain from his belt, jingling it just for the pleasure, and fit the key into the lock. With a dramatic swing he flung the door open, and it slammed into the inside wall.

"Little Ninja's is open!" He shouted, pumping his fist into the air.

Carefully he pushed into the building, turning the lights on and dancing across the black and white checkered tile. He beatboxed as he twirled himself around, saying hello to every table and chair he passed on his way to the back kitchen.

"Good morning pizza dough maker!" He laughed as he flipped the lights on in the kitchen. The dim lighting sufficed for now, but Donnie had promised him that he would replace the bulbs when he had the time.

"Good morning picture of Chuck Norris!" He smiled as he glanced across the kitchen toward his beloved portrait.

"And good morning oven!" He grinned at the junky black box that hung lopsided on the wall underneath Chuck Norris. He rushed over and tried to correct its position, but it fell right back into its crooked position. He shrugged. It was plugged in, that was good enough for him.

Rush hour wasn't for several more hours, but still Mikey opened up shop every day, early in the morning. He always played his antique jukebox-whom he thanked New York street vendors for-at full blast to keep his spirits running. And today was no exception as he slid out of the kitchen and across his shiny floors to the lit up jukebox. After successfully removing polka from the list, he had nothing but 80s and 90s rock and roll left. So he took advantage of it, and started playing a random 80s song he had only heard once before.

Singing along and playing his air guitar, he jumped on one of his numerous tables and jammed along with the song, screwing up every other lyric. Eventually he toppled off the table and skidded across the floor on his shell, turning around and around as he did. He laughed, brushed off his knees, stood up, then started sweeping away some of the dust he had neglected yesterday straight out the door.

He had purchased the building, which had already been designed and used as a pizza shop before, for a discounted price. He had saved up for so long, and being able to sign his name on the form had given him the most pride in the universe. Perfectly placed at only seven or so minutes from his apartment, he had probably gotten the best bargain in town, and he had been rubbing it in his brothers' faces for weeks.

They always asked him why he had no business though.

And to that Mikey always sheepishly told them that he had yet to come up with a menu beyond plain cheese or pepperoni. It turned out that running your own business was hard, and that neglecting to listen to them on that had landed him in a rough spot. He knew nothing about owning a pizza shop. It was his dream though, if people said to follow his dreams, why shouldn't he? He coughed with the dirt cloud that choked him and made his eyes water. He still needed to get Donnie's help around here, he had mentioned deep cleaning, and Mikey wasn't too sure what he had meant by that, but he felt that he needed it.

No doubt that was why his business had been so crummy.

"Hey, mutant scum!"

Mikey looked up and found that leaned in the doorway was some fat old man with a disgusting grin. Mikey glared and shook his head. He tried to ignore him, using the better judgment his brothers had told him about, but the man stood there, casting a deep shadow across his floor. He refused to leave.

"Do you really think people will eat from something as filthy as you?" He taunted, his fat belly jiggling around while he laughed.

Mikey frowned and approached the man, opening his mouth to say something, but the man shook his head and walked off down the street. Michelangelo felt anger stir around within him, but he held his tongue. He wasn't like Raph was, but he certainly did get angry with all these mutant racists. They were everywhere, stirring up fights and antagonizing others. The worst they did was throw a few punches though, and everyone knew that it probably wouldn't get beyond that. There were thick rules in place after all.

Mikey sighed and turned back to look at his empty parlor. He could imagine the bustling people, the happy families, how popular he would be. He could see it all in front of him if he wanted to, but it was all blocked by the negativity of the reality of the situation. He needed to spruce the place up, get it to look better. Then he could show them. He would show them all. With a skip in his step he locked up and rode down the street to go find another street vendor. Surely there was more he could do.

He was positive of it.

\----------------------------------

"Chin up, Drake!" Leo corrected, showing his student the right position.

The boy, about seven, studied his open palms, then curled them into fists. He kicked his leg in the air and got knocked to the ground in one sweep of the leg from the girl he had been sparring. She grinned, her missing two front teeth proudly on display, and she fluffed one of her pigtails in triumph. Leo smiled, clapping for Veronica, then kneeled down to help his other student up. Holding his head and groaning, Drake stared up at his Sensei with shame. But Leo only smiled and smoothed his messy hair back.

"You'll get 'em next time." He assured him, and with that, Drake smiled and wiped his nose with his sleeve. He plopped down next to the line of kids seated neatly in front of Leo, giving him a quick thumbs up.

"Alright." Leo let out a sigh. "How about we have James and..." He glanced around the room for his next 'victim'. His eye grazed over James, who was pointing at a vulnerable boy over at the end of the line with merely his eyes and a slight nod of his head. Leo smiled and called on the innocent face of young William, who stared at him in fear.

"Relax Will." Leo smiled and helped him up. "James won't hurt you."

Both boys, around the age of 12 or 13, stood up, and bowed their heads in front of each other. They took stances, James with his black hair and confidence shining on display, and William with his tussled light brown hair and fear draining him of any smile. They were waiting for the call from Leo, who took a few steps back and corrected a few mild stance problems with Will. But once it had all been fixed, he held his hand up gently, then sliced it down diagonally through the air, the signal to begin.

As the spar unfolded before him, he couldn't hold back his cheers and smiles. His students, advanced in techniques of the Hamato Clan's special ninjitsu forms, had excelled faster than he had expected, and the parents paid good money to let their kids learn it.

"Will, guard your chest!" He barked just moments before the boy took a blow from James's strong fist. He grunted and fell on his side, begging for mercy. Leo called for the spar to stop, and told James to sit down as he helped Will.

The 12-year-old bit his lip and stumbled to his feet again, but this time without the looming terror of having to spar against one of the best students in the class. Leo showed Will the motions and movements slowly, giving the rest of his class a review, but he had no time to finish up. He looked up at the clock and found that he was five minutes from closing up his class, and had to let them loose to change and gather their belongings.

"I'll be seeing you all Thursday!" He smiled and waved as the crowd spread across the room to pick up their things.

Leo loved his job. He couldn't help but enjoy what he did, he was expanding the clan that his father had lost, and he finally got the chance to play Sensei. He had always wanted that when he was younger, often playing the part when he was alone. He saw a lot of himself in these kids, but not just himself, each had a flash of one of his brothers within them. James had the brute force and over confidence that he saw in Raphael, and he always liked to flaunt it whenever he sparred one of the others. Leo wondered how he and Raph would get along if they ever met.

Leo brushed off one of his shoulders and opened the door for one of the parents who had come in to pick up their child. He kicked out the door stop and followed the woman back into his dojo, watching as Veronica, the redhead with the crazy style of fighting, ran over and practically knocked her mother off her feet in a hug. Leo laughed and waved as they left, and continued to stand and wait as each child disappeared with their parents.

His shoulders were tense. Stress from financial work was starting to get to him, though he knew that he could handle more than he gave himself credit for. Still, of all his years, Splinter had never warned him about how rigorous the real world could be. He had thought his life of fighting crime was hard, but no. No, this was much worse, he wanted to go back to carefree days of eating pizza and watching television with his brothers.

It was only a few minutes later that he realized that William was still sitting patiently on the floor of the dojo. He had his backpack in his lap, obviously anxious and ready to go home. Leo peered out the window. The street was empty, and leaves were knocked around crazily in the breeze. His bare feet making a soft pitter-pattering as he crossed the floor, approached Will, and bent on one knee.

"Do you know where your mom is?" He asked.

Will bit his lip and shook his head. "My sister might be coming instead." He mumbled under his breath. He was obviously embarrassed and exhausted. "My mom works late nights now."

Leo nodded. "If you want, you can come meditate with me while we wait."

It wasn't like William had any other options, so he joined his master and they sat across from one another. Leo crossed his legs, and Will copied. And with a smile, Leo took in a few deep breaths, then closed his eyes, leaving his student in silence as he observed and copied. Leo could hear nothing besides the creak of the building, and his breathing. And slowly but surely, his mind let go of what was currently running through him, and he found himself sitting in front of his life's timeline.

_"Guys, guys!" Donnie excitedly cheered as he ran into the living room. He had his laptop in one hand, in his other, his T-Phone. He was grinning from ear to ear. "The results are in!"_

_"Did you read them yet?" Raph dropped everything, his face wild with curiosity, and ran towards his younger brother in a flash. Mikey joined him, and Leo bounded from the dojo with Splinter in tow._

_"No, they're still loading." He said. "But with the people in there, there's got to be a majority voting, right?"_

_Mikey twirled around with his arms spread. He was laughing and dancing, practically tripping over his own feet in joy. This was exactly what they had all been waiting for, after what felt like decades of waiting and waiting, it all led up to this moment. This moment that would decide their freedom, or decide their eternity in hiding._

_"Its up!" Donnie had shouted._

_He had almost dropped his laptop from everyone shoving him out of the way to get a better look. He growled and kicked at his brothers but they clawed up his arms in anticipation. Nobody could see the numbers or the words on the screen, and it was their own faults. Finally Donnie snatched his laptop away and held it up in the air to avoid prying hands._

_"I'll read it, I'll read it!" He snapped._

_They all settled down and tapped their feet as they waited for the results._

_"Results on the inclusion of the "Mutants of America" Act in our government system have beaten what everyone expected." He read. "After an apparently moving word from Ms. April O'Neil and Mr. Casey Jones, the Congress has made its decision that-"_

_"Give me that!" Raph huffed and yanked the tech away. Donnie did make any move to get it back though, because he had already read the result, and was celebrating with a vibrant victory dance._

_"80% of the congregation voted for us!" Raph cried in surprise. Leo snatched the laptop away to check with his own eyes. He smiled and pumped his fist in the air, and glanced over to find Mikey running around in circles around the lair, screaming at the top of his lungs in pure delight._

_Splinter gently took the laptop from his eldest son, and read over the words with his own eyes. He smiled lightly. His eyes wandered up towards his sons, who had gathered in a circle and were dancing like they had no control over their bodies. At seventeen years old it was all he expected from them._

_"High three!" Mikey shouted._

_And they smacked their hands together._

Leonardo opened his eyes suddenly with a deep inhale of surprise. William gave him a concerned look from over by the door. He had his backpack slung around his shoulders, but he had dropped one of his 'textbooks' on the floor, which had broken Leo's trance.

"I'm sorry Sensei, I didn't want to disturb you." He profusely apologized, but Leo waved it off once he saw that there was a car parked outside.

"Its alright William. I'll be seeing you Thursday, right?"

"Right." Will smiled and opened the door, rushing out into the cold. Leo mused it was his sister that was in the driver's seat, since he otherwise didn't recognize her. He gave a short wave, then locked the door.

As he strode back into his dojo, he held a solemn expression. Hanging on the wall was a picture of all of his brothers, arms slung around each other's shoulders, behind them stood Master Splinter, and in front of them stood Casey and April, laughing and making awkward ninja poses. He locked his hands behind his shell and smiled as he studied the two humans that had impacted his life so greatly.

Without them, he, nor his brothers, would have any work or any support at all.

"Thank you." He mumbled towards the photo, then wove his way around back to the bathroom.

He had a few phone calls that he ought to make.

\----------------------------------

Raphael stormed down the street with his gun firmly gripped in his hands. He led two other men behind him, and with the force of the Hulk, he slammed his shoulder into the door of the apartment building. In a puff of dirt and dust, the wood flimsily fell over, and the men who had been hiding inside shouted and held up their hands in defeat. All except for one, who held up his gun, and pointed it right at the mutant that had barged into his hideaway.

"Get back, or I'll shoot!" He stammered. His arms were shaking, and flashes of fear ran through his face. Raph laughed and took a step closer. The man moved his finger over the trigger, so Raph stopped moving. He glared and moved his finger over the trigger of his gun too.

"You don't want to shoot me." He growled.

The man was practically shaking in his undies, but still he defended the men behind him. They all wallowed in their own filthy money and marijuana, trying to drag it out the back door to make a getaway, but Raph's backup was pointing their weapons at them in a second. No way was anyone getting out of here without forfeiting everything. Raph would make sure of it, he was armed after all.

"I will shoot you!" The man snapped back. He fired his gun, but with terrible aim, and the bullet whizzed past Raph's head and instead hit the wall behind him.

"Shouldn't have done that." Raph's eyes narrowed and he charged at the man, knocking him on the ground with the force of a bear. Something snapped, and the guy screamed in pain, flailing his arms around until Raph had them pinned too. "Its been a pleasure." Raph hissed before he snapped the handcuffs around his criminal's wrists and threw him out the door.

Never had his anger been such a valuable thing in Raph's life. From birth this was what he was meant for, and he enjoyed his work more than anything. He doubted that any of his brothers could have the same kind of joy that he had, because none of them got to beat bad guys up anymore. Raph still got to smash people's heads in. It was a good life.

"Sir."

Raph's head snapped to one of the others he had taken with him. He was peeling a floorboard up, and revealing thousands of little sacks of a sparkling white powder. Raph's upper lip curled in disgust and he rolled his eyes with a gruff sigh and a few curses.

"Notify the drugs unit." He said, then made his way back into the daylight.

It smelled like fast food. His stomach growled, but he had decided to forget eating that morning, so it was his own fault. But he had been tracking this case all day, honestly, who could blame him? He brushed drywall off his shoulder and pulled out his phone to contact the boss. He was about to get a raise. And hopefully, a pretty hefty one.

While the dial tone rung, he watched as the group of three that he had busted were thrown into a car, all shouting and cursing and Raphael and his coworkers. He frowned, rolling his eyes again. New York crime disgusted him, he often times had to hold himself back from cracking each and every criminal's skull. His phone clicked and on came the gruff voice of the boss man himself.

"Raphael. What is it?" He grunted.

"I caught them." Raph grinned.

"So I hear!" Mr. Daniels cheered, his voice deep and booming through the receiver like a waterfall. Raph winced but kept on smiling. He was so getting a raise now. No doubt about it. "Not bad for a mutant." He teased.

Raph's smile drooped and he grit his teeth to try to keep himself from not shouting insults back. He knew that he was teasing. But it still made his blood boil.

"Look, I've gotta go, new case on this gang I'm following, I want you in on it." Mr. Daniels sighed. "You. Me. We'll talk over coffee, sound good?"

"Sounds great!" Raph sighed, then hung up.

He opened the door to his police van and dropped inside. With a squeal he sped off down the street, blocking out the curses of the druggies he had grouped together behind the cage. He licked his lips. His stomach was still growling, and right across the highway he could see a great view of the rest of the city. He strained his eyes as he studied the city below him. He could recognize water towers he had kicked in anger on late nights when he was younger. He saw a scorch mark running through the pavement from a laser.

This section of Manhattan was all too familiar, and he hadn't even realized just how close to home this chase had taken him. He turned his eyes back onto the road and kept his route uptown like he was supposed to. And just as he was about to turn onto an exit, he got a good view of Shredder's lair. His heartbeat raced just by looking at it and thinking of all the memories he had engraved into his soul. But the building was now nothing but a hunk of metal, rusted and abandoned.

Not too far beyond there he could see the former T.C.R.I building complex, the sign now replaced with glowing letters of a new company for food production and sales. Raph had been running from this part of the city for so long, that he hadn't even taken time to realize how much things could change in just a year or so. His eyes reluctantly turned back to the road, and he swerved crazily about trying to get himself in the right lane.

"Hey, what're you, some tourist?" One man shouted from the cage. "Keep your eyes on the road!"

"Nobody likes a backseat driver!" Raph growled and gripped the steering wheel harder, trying his best not to to pull over and shoot them all. "Why don't ya' just shut up, and play nice?" He replied and flicked his headlights on in the evening light. He could see the police station from here, only a few more minutes.

And then he could get his raise.

\----------------------------------

Donatello hardly slept anymore. He spent late nights giving himself tension headaches from being on a computer for so long, and early mornings chugging coffee and preparing lecture notes for the upcoming obstacle he had. School was starting up, which meant that he had to wind himself up too in preparation for the long road ahead. Although he had no idea what that was going to mean for him, or how much more coffee he was going to need to stock up on for the cupboard.

In two days he was going to be a professor on campus of a college. He was going to be teaching a classroom of humans, and he had no idea how they were going to take it. As far as he knew, he was the youngest in his field of teaching, and the only mutant professor to work on a campus. It was a brave new world, of which he was terrified of.

He had no clue what he was doing.

He was just going over a few sheets, correcting typos and fixing graphs, when his laptop started beeping, and he had to leave his mountain of papers to go check on it. It was a video chat notification from April, and happily he opened it. He had to adjust his webcam for a few minutes once she was on line though. He turned on a lamp in his living area and rubbed his eyes, but that didn't keep him from smiling once he saw how her face lit up seeing his.

"Donnie!" She smiled. "Wish I could hug you from over here!"

"Me too, April. Good to see you!" He stifled a yawn.

"Donnie, how much sleep have you been getting?"

"Hmm? Oh, a few hours each night, but as soon as I get into the normal habit-"

April sighed and shook her head, rubbing her temple with her index finger. She was obviously not pleased, but she found herself laughing. That was the Donnie she knew, always up late and insisting he needed a few more minutes. Through her screen, though the resolution wasn't great, she could tell that his eyelids were drooping, and that so desperately he needed sleep. She was almost tempted to end the chat, but she knew he wouldn't go to sleep anyways.

"How are you Donnie?" She asked.

"Evidently tired." He laughed. "But I'm good. The guys are great too, Mikey paid off the pizza place."

"Oh, that's great!" April clapped her hands together, her eyes twinkling. "I can't wait to go see it with Casey, did he decide on a name yet?"

"Little Ninja's." Donnie said.

"That's cute!" April placed her chin in her open palm.

Donnie could catch the glint of her wedding ring in the light of her hotel room. Almost instantly his teenage foolishness struck him like a load of bricks, and he blinked the pain of his youth away. He had been so stupid then. And with April married to Casey, he shouldn't even try to dabble in the art of remembering what he had been like when he was 15. When he was 15, foolish, and love-struck. By this point, April and Donnie had allowed themselves to grow as best friends. Donnie wasn't too sure if he appreciated Casey still, but he tolerated him to a point. If Casey made his best friend happy, then the least he could do was allow himself to be happy too.

Besides, he couldn't deny their attraction to each other.

Maybe Donnie would find someone else if fate was a kinder thing in the future.

"How's Raph?" April asked, rubbing her tense right shoulder.

"Ah, kicking butt. As usual, crime foiled by the mighty Raphael." He laughed.

"And Leo?"

"His dojo is actually doing really well. From what he tells me, business is booming." He said. "Unfortunately I haven't had time to meet up with them on Sundays like we used to." His smile faded into a frown, and he traced a circle in the table his laptop perched on.

"Come on, Donnie, you've gotta make time for them. You're still a team."

"Yeah, I know we are." Donnie smiled. "Just not the same team as before."

A few minutes later, April sadly sighed and told Donnie that she had to go. She was in Italy on a news reporting job, and they had a new case they had to follow. Donnie had let her go, but as soon as the call ended, he realized just how separated he had been from his brothers. He glanced at the stack of papers on his desk in the kitchen, then back at his laptop. In a few minutes he had himself freshened up, and he began to clean his apartment up enough so that it was presentable.

He called his brothers, who all were only floors beneath him for convenience, and they all joined him for a round or two of poker at three in the morning. None of them seemed to mind it, in fact, it was the most fun they had had together in ages. With Raph being a sore loser supplying beer, Mikey hanging upside-down the entire game, Leo being too cautious all the time while being a terrible bluffer, and Donnie being the systematic winner the entire game, it was like everything had gone back to the way things were before. When they were four teenage brothers living in the sewer together.

Except...maybe without all the beer...


	3. People, Places, Things

Raph came into the police station with his natural face, a half glare as it seemed to everyone else. A leather jacket was draped over his shoulders, nicely tailored to his build. His badge, on a chain that hung around his neck, swayed in the warm blast of air from inside as he came in. Lately the eyes that turned on him when he came in had stopped, since he wasn't the only mutant in the police department anymore. Now they were all staring at the cat-like girl that came in a few hours later than he did. Still there were always people staring, fixed on him with this awkward fascination that never seemed to subside. It was annoying but understandable, though it still didn't keep him from asking people to cut it out when their gazes lingered for too long. He was a citizen, not a zoo animal or lab experiment.

He came to his desk and sat down, relaxing before his meeting. He rolled his shoulders and cracked his knuckles, leaning back in his chair as he did. He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to drown out the rest of the building's happy chit-chat about this and that. The serenity in being left alone didn't last long though.

"Hey, Raphael."

One eye opened, then the other and he sat up straight. The guy that he had come to identify as Steve and not 'guy who brings coffee' was in front of him, a carton of four coffees in one hand and his other hand holding a manila folder. Papers and photos appeared to be poking out of it. Raph took it and his face contorted into one of confusion.

"What's this?"

"Daniels told me to give you it. Something about a new case, a meeting?"

"Yeah, thanks." He opened it up and set it down on his desk as Steve walked away with his coffee load.

He spread the files out with his hands. A Post-It had been stuck on the first page with his meeting time written in it in Daniels's trademark chicken scratch. He pulled it off and stuck it on the monitor for his desk computer, then started browsing. He started reading through the case and his face twisted in anger, bright green eyes fuming and practically burning holes through every word of the report.

Rape.

Mutant rape.

He ground his teeth together and the report nearly crumpled up in his hand. He slapped it down onto the desk and huffed loudly, then slid it all back and slammed the folder shut. He couldn't read anymore, it was too painful. Anyone put on the case would never be professional about it now that a mutant was handling it too. They'd stare and ask questions as if he would know why his kind would ever do that.

'Same reason a person would do it.' He thought to himself.

Raph growled under his breath and pushed himself away from his desk, nearly knocking his chair over in the process. People noticed of course, but he couldn't find any room to care. He needed a break, and his only shot at cooling himself down was getting Red Bull from the machine on the other side of the building, far, far, away from his latest case.

He hadn't been like his brother's had been when choosing jobs. He'd assumed that since they grew up as ninjas that would be the only option around. Staying fighters. He was wrong though, and when they told him they had their own plans he had merely frowned and chose to do what he did best. Smashing, hitting, and fighting. So here he was in the NYPD, smashing, hitting, and fighting. He still felt a tad betrayed by the reality, but at least Leo was doing something similar. Don he always guessed would be the first to leave, and Mikey...well, Raph was admittedly proud.

He wasn't a complete screwball now. It seemed like he was getting serious about this pizza place even though he had no business yet.

He jogged down a shallow set of stairs, the vending machine just on the other side of a small landing before another staircase down. He pulled out a five dollar bill from his belt, where a shiny gun sat relaxed in its holster, and waited. The satisfying clunk of a cold drink in the bottom and the cooling feeling in his hand relaxed him for some reason. As he turned around and headed back up the stairs, he bumped shoulders with some woman, and she tripped, her coffee splattering all over the floor behind him. She growled and looked at him just as he turned around to see what happened.

"That cost me fifteen bucks!" She complained, gesturing to the light brown puddle in front of her. "You're paying!" A loose piece of her dark hair fell in front of her eyes, only adding to the shadows on her face. She was angry, but in the mix of it all she seemed pained more than anything.

"Who pays fifteen bucks for a cup of coffee?" He exclaimed. His eyes went wide as he snarled. "No way am I paying for that!"

"At least get me paper towels so I can clean it up!" She sighed. She looked stressed and honestly just exasperated, but it didn't stop her from jabbing a finger furiously towards the refreshment table Daniels was eating at just a few feet from the staircase.

Raph growled and studied her, then the puddle at her feet. It was nearly a full cup she had spilled. "Fine. Stay there." He sighed, rolled his eyes, and finished jogging up the stairs to get some. He grabbed a roll from the little table and chucked them down the stairs. They almost landed in the puddle but he had gotten lucky, and rushed away. He thought that she had most definitely been overreacting, and he rolled his eyes just thinking about it again.

Fifteen bucks for a cup of coffee. Maybe in Hollywood.

On the way back to his desk, Daniels yelled for him. Greg was a short and stout man with grey stubble on his chin. He wasn't old, but he most definitely wasn't young and lean like most of the people that worked for him, he being the captain and them his little hive of worker bees. His jiggly belly was getting filled with a Hostess brownie he'd picked off the table, and he fumbled with the wrapper as Raphael turned and approached him just when he thought he could get away.

"What'd you get from that case?" He shoved the brownie into his mouth and chewed slowly.

"Nothing much. Didn't read it all the way." He admitted, then begrudgingly accepted the peace offering Daniels gave him, which was another Hostess brownie he'd shoved into his pocket. "Thanks." He murmured.

"Don't mention it." He swallowed and wiped the remaining crumbs away from the corners of his mouth, then smiled and shoved his hands into his pockets. "Anyway, we have a meeting in five minutes with the others I put on it. Top field."

Raph twitched just hearing that phrase. His heart was soaked in pride enough as it is, but being associated with "top field" made him at least appreciate the chance to be on a case. Slowly he nodded. "Right. Who's on it?"

"Ah, you'll see. Not too many people."

Raph pulled the wrapping off his brownie and took a small nibble of it. It wasn't bad. He took a bite out and turned away, going back to his desk so he could actually read the report even though he didn't want to. He didn't like anything he was reading, it made him feel sick, so he still couldn't finish it. He tossed the wrapper in the garbage and covered his face with his hands, rubbing his feet together under his desk before he pushed himself up and took his folder with him. There was never anything wrong with being early.

The room the meeting was in was small with a long table. Daniels was already in there taking slow sips out of his hot cup of coffee and flipping through a few other cases before Raph came in and he shut them all. He sighed and tucked them under his arm, then scratched his stubbly chin.

"Finished reading it?"

"About."

"Good, ah, here's your partner." He smiled and nodded towards the doorway.

Raph turned around and felt his heart drop in frustration. She didn't look too pleased either. She tossed her case folder onto the table and jabbed her hand out for him to shake like a knife in the air, and he begrudgingly took it. It was the woman who'd yelled at him on the staircase with the choppy dark hair.

"Hi." He sighed. "Sorry about earlier."

"You're fine." She shook her head with a tiny sigh and grabbed his gigantic hand with a displeased tone embedded into her voice. "I'm over it."

"Oh, you know each other?" Daniels smiled and shook his jolly belly up and down as he waddled towards them.

"Kind of." Raph swallowed and took his hand back from her. "I didn't catch your name."

"Morgan." She tapped her badge and frowned, giving him a look that he could tell asked him if he even knew how to read.

"Raph."

"Good, good, you're all acquainted now." Daniels smiled just as a few other people came in and he focused his attention elsewhere, leaving Raph and Morgan alone in the awkward silence of barely knowing each other.

"So...you're a mutant then?"

"Yeah." He clenched his teeth. "Saying something about it?"

"No. Just stating it." Her voice took an agitated edge again, almost defensively, but she didn't look hostile on the outside quite yet. "What does Raph stand for?"

"Raphael." He answered smoothly, his green eyes now completely focused on every move she made. She nodded and looked at him with a stern face.

"Okay. Then I guess we're working together to catch this stupid moron." She sighed with another inaudible complaint grumbled under her breath while she tucked her hair behind her ears.

"I guess so."

\----------------------------------

Alarms were tolerable. No, not terrible, they were tolerable, depending on the noise they made when they went off. If they were too loud, he hated them, if they were too quiet, he despised them, but if they were right in-between and made a soothing noise he could wake up with a peace of mind before he started his day. Unfortunately for Donnie, he didn't get an alarm at all, because he'd forgotten to set it, so he jumped out of bed naturally with all the grace of a manatee and flopped over on the floor with a grunt, still scrambling to get into the shower he'd neglected to take the night before.

He got into the bathroom only to find that he had no time to bathe.

"You're kidding me!" He groaned and slapped his hand over his face. "Idiot!" He scolded himself. He flung open the closet door and slipped a suit jacket over his shoulders while he struggled remembering how to put a tie around his neck. Breakfast? Skip it? Eat it? What did he have time to make?

A loud beeping went off and he jumped. Now that was his emergency alarm. How he managed to set that but not his regular alarm astounded him. Now he'd completely lost any chance of having peace of mind. First class. First students. He was going to kill himself before he got to the school.

He strode into his kitchen and opened the pantry. His eyes flashed around from box to can to bag and he finally just grabbed an entire box of granola bars and slipped them into his binder. He'd organized that the night before, each of his sheets neatly pressed into the rings as he wanted.

Apartment keys, scarf, pencils, phone, door.

Light autumn breezes graced his face and he fast walked, checking the time on his phone repetitively as if it would get better by wishing. He was going to be so late and now he risked getting fired. Would they fire him? It was the first day, they couldn't possibly... Don picked up the pace and danced through a crosswalk between cars. He could see the dome now, the big bronze dome just a few blocks away. In that brief second he flung open his binder and fumbled around in the pockets for his badge, his big fingers not helping any. The clip was tiny and he hated trying to get it on like this. He bet good money he'd end up doing what Raph told him he did, put it on a cord and slip it around your neck.

Donnie slipped the badge back into his binder and sighed. His cheeks were stinging with the biting cold now, all of it was in his face. There were the doors. He would make it. Barely.

_"And here's your room. It might move between semesters, but for the first one its right here." The woman told him, smiling and unlocking the broad doors. It was dark, and she turned around so she could flip the lights on beside the door. Donnie swallowed and felt so much excitement bundle up inside of him the moment he saw it all. Oh, it was Christmas._

_He strode past her so he could take it in alone. To the right were the seats, to his left was his desk and the biggest board for equations and formulas he had ever seen in his entire existence, and he fought the urge to drool just looking at his desk. His lab in the lair was nothing compared to this, there was so much more space and so much less...everyone._

_"Do you like it?" She asked gently._

_"I love it." He laughed, running one large hand across the top of his desk._

The doors opened and a blast of warm air soothed his nerves. There, all better. He took in a deep breath, coffee wafted through his nostrils and he felt an extra zing in his step now. First class started in five minutes and it was all the way on the other side of the college. He had to fast walk. He didn't feel like running.

Linmoor University was a strange thing. Built only within the last decade or so, it had already become a notable spot on the map for its observatory center, the big dome that jutted out between boxy New York buildings like a sore thumb. The telescope there was said to be one of the best for a community to use, if you paid a small fee and rented ahead of time, things that Donnie didn't have to do at all since he was on the staff. His position had a lot of benefits actually. He was planning on visiting the archives later.

There were big skylights above his head, and when you looked up the campus seemed to stretch upward for miles. Balconies on each floor spiraled up and up into the sunlight, and he caught a glimpse of a few students rushing about. He smiled and kept hurrying towards a staircase near the back of the main hall, hidden behind ferns and other large plants. His hand hit the wood railing and he started rushing upstairs, binder firmly plastered to his front.

The doors at the top squealed open and his eyes flashed about, trying to remember if he had to take a left or a right. His instinct told him left, but after a few wasted minutes of awkward wandering, it told him right. He could see his name in fancy gold print on a little plaque all the way at the end of a small hall, and he smiled. There was a clock right above the door that told him he was about a minute or two early, and inwardly he congratulated himself, if not for how he presented himself only a second later.

The doors opened and he got tangled in his own footsteps. His binder flew from his hands and skidded across the floor, hitting a few tables in the process. Donnie's toes were crushed under his body weight as his arms frantically waved about in an attempt to keep his balance, but he failed and his delicate face was smushed directly into the ground with a satisfying thump and a grunt. Tense shoulders slumped as he waited for the world to stop moving. The first few snickers from his students were the first things to sting at his pride as his large hand held his head.

A girl with choppy red hair had gathered the contents of his binder for him and handed it to him sympathetically, but not without its own teasing smile. Donnie took it and set it on his desk. He began blushing ferociously, cleared his throat a few times, and then slowly dragged himself to his chair. He could hear his heart pounding in his ears when he looked at all of them, who were staring back at him with a much keener interest. He swallowed and scratched the back of his neck, then glanced at the clock on the wall again. He might as well try to recover from his bent pride.

"Good morning." He quietly started, then flashed a smile that didn't show his dorky gap.

He was trying so hard to muster up the strength he had been running off of on the way over, but he wasn't feeling it anymore. True, they weren't laughing now, but they were staring. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, they probably had thousands of questions, stereotypes, prejudices, and more running rampant in their heads.

"Morning." A few students mumbled in response. He let out a deep breath and decided it might just be easier for him to stand up and move a little if he were going to do this properly. He needed to feel a little more open and get fresh air.

Now...which should he address first? His name? Or the fact that he was mutant?

"I'm...Professor Donatello, and this is advanced chemical engineering." He smiled a little brighter and started pacing back and forth in front of his front row of students. It felt good saying that. His hands trembled a little from how hard his heart was beating. A hand raised a few rows back and he nodded as his subtle way of acknowledging it.

"You're a mutant." They said slowly, then raised a brow in intrigue.

"Yeah...that would be me." Donnie laughed nervously, his cheeks still flushed.

"Are you the first mutant? To do this kind of thing, I mean."

Donnie thought on it for a little, rubbing his chin as his eyes wandered up to the ceiling. "I suppose so, yes. Let's hope I won't be the last." He joked. A few smiles spread across the faces of his class and his nerves relaxed a little. Another hand raised and he nodded.

"Can you remove your shell?"

Donnie blinked, his smile instantly sucked from his face and he shook his head with wide eyes. "No. Anatomy doesn't bend rules for me."

They nodded. "I just thought, since mutants are mixed there might...you know." They seemed a little bashful, glancing back and forth between their other classmates. They looked a little unsure and nervous that they had crossed a line, so Donnie could tell they weren't trying to be rude. He smiled gently and nodded.

"I understand. I can retract my body into my shell though." He answered. A louder murmur broke across the room, an excited one, followed by dozens of other smiles. "I have three brothers that can do that too."

Another hand raised. "Are they all turtles too?"

He nodded. "I have two older brothers and one younger, all turtles."

The excitement that had budded in the room melted away every drop of anxiety he had been drowning in that morning. Where'd he'd gotten his name, what his father was like, stories of what he'd done as a teenager, they all kept flying out of his mouth faster than he could keep track of. He glanced at the clock and realized that he'd spent the majority of the class like this, and several hands were raised at one time. He'd captured the crowd. He was interesting.

They loved him.

Finally he started laughing and moved back around to his desk, stooping down into a cabinet so he could pull out an empty mason jar. He removed the lid and searched around for a sharpie, marking 'Questions' in big capital letters, then setting it on the counter. His deep eyes trailed up to the class again and he shrugged with a pure laugh, showing the gap between his teeth almost proudly. They all knew what it was for, he didn't have to say anything about it, and because he saw a good majority start pulling out index cards and ripping sheets of paper out of their notebooks, he took in that moment to just sit there and be proud of himself while he checked the class list silently.

This was going to be a good year.

\----------------------------------

Leo was always contempt with waking up this early.

He'd make tea, take a shower, then walk to the dojo in the early hours of the morning in what peace he could get out of America's restless city. The inside of the dojo was always quiet though, sweet and serene where the only thing you could hear were your own footsteps and breathing. And every morning he'd unlock the doors and find Splinter calmly meditating there. It was the best kind of routine.

Splinter did early morning classes, usually with adults who wanted to learn and were dedicated enough for that time in the morning. He lived above the dojo, in a small apartment that kept him nice and secluded. When Splinter had first set out advertisements for the classes, he did them alone, but asked his eldest to show up if he'd like. Leo hardly hesitated, although his brothers did joke about 'the favorite child' title that his father insisted didn't exist.

There weren't as many adult classes as there were younger kid's classes, which Splinter wholeheartedly bestowed upon his son. And though at first Leo was hesitant about teaching his own classes, slowly he started to love it. The kids loved him. At first they had been afraid, which was only expected considering his appearance. They had timidly come in and tried to sit as far away from him as possible, so Leo made his best efforts to get them comfortable. The first few classes were filled with introductions and getting to know each other, which took longer than he expected, but it wasn't like he didn't enjoy it. Getting to tell them about all his ninja adventures sparked a lot of interest in every single kid. They'd listen to him tell his stories, eyes lit with excitement, mouths gaping open and gasping whenever he told them about the Shredder, or the Foot Clan.

He enticed lots of giggles whenever he talked about Mikey.

Leo took his keys out of his belt. He only had two, one for the apartment and one for the dojo, Splinter having the spare. He opened the door and instantly the calm atmosphere washed over him like a flood. He could smell incense burning from the altar in the back room, which was only open for a few minutes in the morning before his father shut and locked it so no prying eyes or grubby hands could disturb it. He stuffed his jingling keys back into his belt and softly slipped into the room, taking in the soothing scent of lavender and cherry blossoms that his father had lit. Non-scented candles were lit on shelves that snaked all the way around the room, a small place that had been a storage room prior.

Splinter had needed the sanctuary though, and technically so did the rest of the family. They came there to meditate when they had the time off work, and needed to be alone. Leo padded in and silently took his seat beside his father, closed his eyes, then took a deep breath in through his nose, out his mouth.

_"Come on guys, have some faith in us." Casey laughed while April adjusted the tie he was struggling putting on. "We've got a long testimony to give them, they'll be begging to let you topside in seconds." His confidence was astounding despite everyone knowing that he wouldn't be the one doing the heavy lifting, most of it would be on April. She looked nervous, chewing on the inside of her lip as she stepped away to admire her work._

_"I've got the entire thing right here." She picked up her small folder and waved it in the air with a little smile. "You guys can look over it if it'll make you feel better." Her hair was done up in a tight bun and one tiny hair fell loose. She frowned and tucked it back up into its embrace._

_Leo was the one to take it and flip through a few pages. He was skimming for typos or missed information, but he couldn't find anything to note there. She'd done a marvelous job, he just wished they could all hear it in person. He handed it back to her and she tilted her head, eyes searching him and his brothers for approval or denial. They all nodded and gave thumbs up, and she giggled._

_"Good, glad to know I fixed it up."_

_"Yeah dude, not cool with the typo on page 3." Mikey narrowed his eyes with a playful grin._

_"It could happen to anyone 'Mickey'." April smirked and lightly punched him in the arm._

_"I don't know, I'd say Mikey has a pretty good shot at being a dancing cartoon mouse for a living." Raph sneered and shoved his younger brother to the side with a laugh._

_April pursed her lips and laughed purely, then shook her head. "We'll be thinking about you guys."_

Leo's eyes opened slowly and he smiled, a tiny laugh escaping him. His father smiled soon enough, and his eyes opened, concentration broken. He glanced at his eldest son and gave him an intrigued look.

"What amuses you?"

"Nothing." Leo sighed contently and took in another deep breath through his nose. "Just remembering things, I guess."

Splinter nodded in understanding and stood up, his son following quickly behind him. His staff, made of jade and carved delicately to fit his hand, hit the wooden floor with a firm thump as he made his way into the main section of the dojo to reflect for a little by practicing his art. Leo normally just watched, so he stood off to the side when his father started, setting his staff down gently on the floor as he bent his mutant knees and begun a slow morning routine he'd created for himself, but hadn't named.

A few minutes later, a soft rapping at the door to the dojo disturbed the peace, and Splinter picked up his staff, collected himself, and made his way to the door with a solemn expression. It opened, and in came his first student of most mornings, Brian as Leo had come to know him. He was around Leo's age, but older by a few years, and he carried a gym bag over his shoulder all the time. He smiled shyly and bowed his head to his superior.

"Good morning, Sensei."

Leo took this as his cue to leave, since only two or three more adults usually came in for this class, and he typically wasn't needed. He snaked around to the back of the dojo where the closet altar, small bathroom, and the door with the staircase leading up to his father's apartment above were. He smiled and opened the bathroom door, slipping in silently for a moment or two.

As he was washing his hands, he glanced up to study himself in the mirror. He was twenty-three. Deep blue eyes blinked and he rubbed his wet hands across his cheeks before he dabbed his face with the towel. He didn't feel twenty-three, he felt like he was still fifteen. Maybe sixteen. But no, he was twenty-three.

He couldn't even remember what he thought he would be doing when he was twenty-three. He guessed that when he was younger it would be the same old routine, wake up for training, go out for patrol, fight some bad guys, save the day, go to sleep...he didn't think any of this would happen at all. Nobody was really expecting it, but then again, the Kraang had done things to the world. Mutagen scattered globally, mutants everywhere in crisis. None of the humans even really knew that mutants were possible until the global broadcasting of unfair treatment. Sure, at first it was called unfair treatment to animals, but eventually it snowballed into mutant kind altogether.

Over the past few years America had changed. A few other countries had changed too, he'd noticed a few of the exclusively American-Mutant Aid branches start to spread into the United Kingdom in the news. There were support groups and research facilities to help advance with medical sciences involving them, awareness committees, mutant community bowling teams and rec facilities. At first they hadn't been a success at all, but it was only so long before all the mutants came out of hiding once they felt safe enough.

His family hadn't been an exception.

Splinter had been hesitant about coming to the surface. Since they were adults, he couldn't hold them back from doing anything, but it took some coaxing for him to agree to open a dojo with Leo. To share their sacred clan name, techniques, styles...it was something that took months of meditation and deep thought that Splinter had labored over. He told them repeatedly when they were growing up that they were the only remaining members of the Hamato Clan, so the idea of starting a dojo had seemed like a good idea to his sons. If they could expand the clan, then why shouldn't they?

A click, then the gentle hum of the radiator as it came on for the morning. He sighed and stepped out, padding quietly down the hall and out into to the dojo again. He watched carefully from his position to the side as Splinter led each of them through exercises he had learned at nine or ten. They were improving, he'd admit that.

He glanced out the window by the door into the busy New York street. The sun was rising and the day was starting, people hurrying around to their jobs, to the store, to their lives. A neon sign flickered above a display window in a little business several buildings over and across the street. A woman came out and dropped an overflowing trash can on the curb for the garbage truck to get, dusted her hands off on her pants, then slinked back inside in her sweats and tank top. He let out a deep puff of air and watched the morning continue in silence.

Blissful silence in the noisy heart of America.

\----------------------------------

The sun was setting and Mikey tugged on the handcart with all his strength. Boxes that stretched high into the sky sat on his little wagon and he grunted with every step he took. He'd bought a lot that afternoon, and now it was time to put it all to good use. Hardware stores weren't just Donnie's favorite place anymore, he'd found a lot of helpful things in there.

The doors squealed open and he locked them behind him, nudging the cart with his foot into the center of the room. He knocked over a few tables in the process, but picked them all up and rolled them to the side so he'd have extra room to unpack his new toys. He smiled as he tugged the biggest box down. A gigantic chalkboard with chains and hooks to hang on the ceiling, complete with a rainbow set of liquid chalk. That had been the one thing he was almost too eager to start using as he tore the cardboard flaps open, peeled the packaging tape away, and yanked the slate free of its foam fortress.

It fell on the floor with a clatter, and he broke into his ox of liquid chalks, choosing a neon orange for him to write his business's name in bright bold letters as a statement. He drew little turtles on both sides of the name and proudly smiled. He'd done a good job thinking all of this up, his brothers would be so proud. Then he frowned. A menu, that's the only other thing this place was missing, and the chalkboard would need that on display. He picked up the blue and tapped it to his chin.

He wanted a menu that was unique, something that really expressed who he was. He had so many ideas, but he wasn't sure if any of them were good. His brothers hated it when he put jellybeans and anchovies on a pizza...so chances were, very rarely he would find anyone else that could understand the desire for that kind of thing like he did. He brought the chalk to the board and smiled as he started writing.

-LEADER'S CHOICE

He tilted his head a little and studied it, then started writing the contents in smaller letters beneath it. This was what Leo liked eating, and at least if he had this on his menu, Leo would come to get something. More people probably understood what he ate anyway, he was going on a weird vegetarian kind of diet, but he still liked pepperoni on his pizza. Just with a lot of extra things. Extra things that happened to be vegetables.

He leaned back on his shell and set down the liquid chalk. His mind was buzzing with ideas now, and he could hardly move his hands fast enough between different chalk colors and remembering to put caps back on all the pens as he scribbled away.

-KUNOICHEESE

He grinned at that one. That could quite possibly be the best pun ever brought into existence.

-MIKEY'S MASTERPIECE

He decided to write 'Ask chef for details' underneath. Maybe it was best to come up with ingredients for that one later, until he was sure that he wasn't the only one that appreciated his culinary genius. He frowned and wrote a few other generic pizza types below that one, but then they started looking boring, so he spiced it up with his own creative flare again.

-SPICY SAIS

-HAWAIIAN TURTLE

The two pizzas his other older brothers would eat and especially enjoy. Raph liked spicy sauces, just not too much, and he really liked having a lot of meat on his pizza ever since they'd come topside and he tried one meat deluxe in the shop in upper-class Manhattan. As for Donnie, he was the only one in the family that appreciated Hawaiian pizza, even Mikey felt as if it were a combo that never should've existed to begin with. He could still see his brother's dorky smile as he ate the entire thing himself. On the bright side, it eliminated pizza fights consisting of violent scratching and hissing among brothers.

He kept writing down names and doodling pictures to the sides. Prices and ingredients littered the board and he only took a break once or twice so he could turn on an extra light or go get a soda from the fridge in the back. Tomorrow he was determined to get extra business, his first customers. He smiled and took a look at his menu for a while before he pulled out his new tablecloths and centerpieces for the tables around the shop. He kicked his wagon to the side and tossed one cloth high into the air, wrapping it around a table with a pure hearted laugh and a thumbs up.

Red tulips and cherry blossom stems stuck up out of glass vases that adorned the tables, a new neon 'OPEN' sign was hung delicately in the window display in front of a new set of blinds. He hung picture frames all around the walls of the shop, each of them holding prints of both scenic New York and Tokyo. He felt like he was on top of the world, and nobody could stop him.

The new menu he'd lovingly made was slid in front of the counter as he stumbled into the back to get a step ladder to hang it up. A new power drill he had eyed in the store was firmly gripped in one hand as he heaved the heavy slate up near the ceiling and struggled with the weight trying to put the anchors in properly. Doing this by himself wasn't fun...but it was necessary. He hated having to bother Donnie and have him come in all grouchy if he had been having a rough day. Besides, he wasn't stupid. He could do this himself.

His brothers had been teasing him either directly in the face or behind his back about his capability of running a business on his own. They hadn't been expecting him to do it, or at least do it well, but they had been really proud when he announced that he'd paid off the building. Now he could just picture their happy smiling faces when he slid a steaming pizza of their choice in front of them while the place bustled with business. Mutants and humans, all of them wanting more.

He would have more friends, he realized. Lots of friends.

He had a lot of ingredients sitting in the kitchen in the back, but he hadn't used any of them yet. He hadn't had a customer actually, not even his own brothers had come in for a bite. An idea popped into his head and he cheered for himself as the second anchor popped perfectly into place, and he set the drill down so he could connect it to the chain on the board.

A grand opening. A party that everyone could see coming for miles. He was the best at throwing parties and celebrations, all the mutants of the world would want to come, every pizza loving person would want to show up. Of course he would need flyers and extra food, and maybe April and Casey could come back to the states to help him out if they had time...he hummed a happy tune as he fastened the chains firmly to the anchor. The board hung sweetly from the ceiling and he smiled with complete satisfaction as he climbed down and turned to admire Little Ninja's in its entirety.

This dream was going to happen.

Next box for him to tear into contained his new oven. That had been a difficult thing to choose out of the store, he'd spent a long while asking specialists which would be best for him and easiest to install. This oven was bigger and shinier than the rust bucket sitting under Chuck Norris in the back. He dragged the box into the kitchen, it only got stuck in the doorway once.

Mikey spent a while pulling out the pieces for assembling it. Maybe that's why he'd gotten it for such a good price, it wasn't pre-assembled of all things. He did his best trying to follow the instructions, but after hours of being sprawled out on the floor with pieces mangled in his oversized fingers, his brain started to throb. He needed help. He grabbed his phone and started dialing for his older brother. Sure, yeah, he could use a power drill all by himself to put his chalkboard in the ceiling, but this was definitely not his specialty. He needed Donnie.

"Hey, Donnie? No, I didn't break anything...I think."


	4. Oranges

Leo flinched only slightly when the needle pricked the inside of his elbow. Even after so many years of being used to the process topside, it still startled him sometimes. Though today wasn't like the other days, the first few rounds of pricking over the past few years were more important in his opinion than this. Those were to see if he was healthy. Those were to see if he was prone to contracting or spreading certain illnesses. Those were to give him vaccinations. This wouldn't really end up mattering to him, or to his brothers, at least that's what they figured, but they still had the procedure done anyway, it was required. Sure...it was a little interesting and all, figuring out the percentages, but in all honesty, would it matter?

"There we are." The needle was swiftly but elegantly removed and the phlebotomist pressed a small patch of gauze to the area before the band- aid was put over it. Leo flexed his elbow a little then nodded and smiled. "We should have results either tonight or tomorrow night." She told him, sliding the small vial filled with his blood into a plastic bag and sealing it tightly. He was free to go now, and gladly, he did.

On the way out of the hospital his large fingers brushed over the band-aid again and again, like a little ritual to make sure that it was still there. The wind was a little bit stronger than usual today, and his eyes narrowed, trying to block the wind out when he finally turned the corner and the wind was on his side now.

Donnie had gone in yesterday to get his done, and said that he'd received the results but hadn't read them yet, reserving that for the small gathering they were going to have at Little Ninja's later that night to discuss Mikey's crazy big plan for an opening party. Speaking of Mikey, Leo had forgotten to remind him to get his mutation number checked, and he pulled his phone out from his belt, sending a quick text to him that he doubted he would receive. As for Raph, he hated being bothered over those things, nagged by his brothers, but Leo was pretty sure he'd already gone out and gotten it done.

Their "birthday" (which still felt weird to say considering that wasn't exactly what they knew it as) was all on the same date, so the mutation number had to be checked a month after that day. A one trip thing. Once you got the number it wouldn't change unless you decided that a mutagen bath was a good idea. Medical science had gone pretty far actually...that's why the number had become standard procedure.

Though unlike heritage testing, which wasn't required, this test was. It would tell them what percentage of them was human, and what percentage of them wasn't. Which was intriguing, he would admit, but unnecessary. With this new procedure implemented, the government had also placed new procedures over mutants once they had received the number, one that wasn't at all necessary for most of them.

You had to be above 60% to be a part of the better half of the minority. Ridiculously enough, that was the government rule, and he supposed only the humans really understood it. It was like mutants were full blown animals, had no human in them, like dogs in a dog show they had to have a pedigree. He felt sorry for the mutants that were just barely below the mark. Considered lower class. Sure, their rights were the same and all...at least for now that was.

He looked up and saw that he was about to pass his dojo on the way back to his apartment to freshen up. He blinked confusedly and ended up crossing the street towards it instead, a redhead with a pixie cut leaned up against the side of the building with her phone for apparently no reason, though she was glancing in the window every now and again.

If it weren't for his natural instinct to find the behavior suspicious, he wouldn't have done anything, but here he was, now in front of her, and he smiled as genuinely and politely as he could.

"Is there something I can help you with?" He pulled his keys out, evidence that he co-owned the place and she nodded, though looking slightly dissatisfied with him, looking him up and down when she smirked.

"Love the Thomas the Tank Engine band-aid bro." She snickered, and it only took a second for Leo's eyes to meet his elbow and he laughed awkwardly. "Anyway, I was wondering, do you have any adult classes open? My little brother takes two every week and I've been waiting for one of you to come back, saw the sign outside." She nodded to the paper he had taped to the window around the side.

"I'd have to ask my father." He motioned for her to come in as he unlocked the door and let her in. He would still have time to freshen up and relax if he hurried. "Who's your brother? I'd know him."

"Will." She answered absently, inspecting the dojo with a heightened curiosity. Leo laughed a little, pictures of poor and hesitant little William flashing through his eyes and she looked back at him, snickering somewhat too. "Yeah...he practices at home but he's horrible."

Leo frowned slightly, shrugging his shoulders. "He just started...he's improving."

"Uh huh." She teased.

He showed a little smile and tilted his head back and forth in a sort of nod, and she raised both eyebrows in amusement as she waggled her finger at him. "You know what I'm saying, I see it in there."

Suddenly it clicked in Leo's head. This must've been the older sister that picked Will up most days, he had been thinking she looked at least slightly familiar, but in a hazy sort of way. Because she was always behind the tinted windshield of a taxi, that was why. He held out his hand for her to shake and she looked at it curiously.

"Leo." He introduced himself, hooking the dojo keys into the loop in his belt, and rather than shake his hand she slapped it like some sort of high five, which made him give a confused expression back at her.

"Max." She nodded, brushing some stray red hairs out of her eyes, smirking as Splinter appeared from the hall, immediately asking who they were and what they needed. Max answered simply and Splinter took her around back to the office to sign some papers to get her into a few classes. He followed, intrigued by her presence in a strange sort of way.

"I do have several spots open for you Ms. Ainsworth." He held a pen out to her and she gently signed her delicate signature on the line. "How would you like to pay for your classes?"

"Yeesh, uh...can I do cash for now? I just got a new job, apartment and everything. I'm not organized enough to have a credit or debit..."

Splinter nodded. "Where do you work?"

"Customer service...for now. It pays horribly." She cringed and shook her head, muttering a few indistinct other things as she handed the pen back over to her new Sensei. "Thanks."

She turned towards the doorway where Leo was leaned up against the wall and he blinked, embarrassed that he'd been caught eavesdropping if that was what she'd call it. But she didn't seem to mind, instead smiling and patting him on the arm with the back of her hand as she left. The bell above the door jingled as it shut.

Leo, finding no other interest in staying, went back to his own apartment.

The sweet smell of cleanliness soothed him into the small couch in the center of the living area right as his phone went off. His eyes were closed and at first he didn't want to bother, but eventually he pulled it out and his eyes lazily scanned over the message before they widened in surprise and he sat up straighter.

**Been a while, Lameonardo.**

He blinked, then smiled, letting out a breathy laugh before he sent back a quick reply.

**It has. What've you been doing lately?**

She didn't reply for several minutes and for a minute he wondered if he sounded desperate to see her. Well, it wasn't quite like that he just...despite it all, the painful memories throbbing in his temples, he may or may not have wanted to meet up in a cafe or something. They'd done it once or twice before. Eventually, the text tone.

**Nothing. Was considering lunch tomorrow.**

Leo knew what that meant, and he rubbed his shoulder. He could practically hear her voice reading the words blazing on the screen, and his thumbs did a little dance around the keys before he started typing back.

**I'm open for lunch. Splinter can come too.**

**It's fine.**

He sighed. Again she was avoiding it, and again he'd have to not tell him. It wasn't really fair to his father, and still he hadn't heard her excuse for why she only insisted on seeing him. Meeting with him. It made practically no sense, she'd seen him a year or two ago, but it was like a switch had been flipped and all of a sudden she didn't want to anymore. He nodded in defeat.

Send.

**12:30?**

**Sure. Usual place. Later.**

She was so brief in her messages it almost made him think that she was being just as cold to him as she seemed to have been toward his father but he shook it off as easily as he could.

**Later Karai.**

\----------------------------------

Morgan stepped out onto the pavement with her new partner, mostly begrudgingly. She hadn't needed one. She worked mostly solo, but apparently for this case she needed some dumb mutant who didn't know how to apologize to people. Her white Camaro sat a ways away from the building and she led it to him, the smell of the city filled just a bit more with exhaust fumes, fast food, and dry bloody noses.

"We're going to go see someone." She grunted, plopping down into the driver's seat as he flung himself in on the other side, slamming the door shut beside him. She started it up and hit the gas before Raph had even bothered to strap himself in, though he felt like he needed more than that, maybe a rollercoaster restraint or seven. There was no way on Earth she wasn't breaking a speed limit.

"Who taught you how to drive?" He blurted out, struggling to secure himself.

Morgan snorted, "It's New York, newb."

He rolled his eyes, gritting his teeth, trying to keep himself from falling out whenever she sped around a corner. "I'm a native, genius, I know how we drive." He sighed. "Doesn't mean we have to, geez."

She laughed and shook her head. "Whatever. Look, we're going to go see the victim, ask her a couple of questions, you need to stay in the car."

"What? I'm not staying here!"

"You heard me. Remember who attacked her, you could send her into shock." Morgan sighed, pulling up in front of a small apartment building. "I'll be right back, relax, should I put the safe guard on your gun? Bring Daniels in to babysit you?"

Raph glared. "You're real funny."

"I try." She shut the door, keys jingling as she shoved them into her pocket.

The building was rather nice actually, nicer than hers. The carpets were clean and the entire place smelled like heavenly vanilla. She rummaged around in her pocket for the paper from the file that had her floor and room number on it as she started up the staircase around the back.

Raphael seemed so dense. She hadn't needed a partner. If she were going to take a partner, she would've taken...oh, she didn't know, but anyone other than him. She'd been around for longer, had more experience, but Daniels kept bumping him up and up in ranks and all and she couldn't understand why. Maybe he had a good shot with a gun, and maybe he'd completed a couple of cases, but she could do all those things and more.

Mutants were...weird. Honestly, weird. She had been just graduating from high school when the news broke that they were letting those things, the object of four-year-old nightmares, loose on the city so they could be "people" when they weren't. They might act like people, sure, but they were not people. It was a bad idea. 30% of the crime that the department took now was the fault of a mutant, indirectly, or just plain their fault. Mutants in bar fights, and mutants robbing businesses, and mutants doing...this stuff.

She sighed, shaking her head and clearing her thoughts then knocked on the door of the apartment,

"Ms. Abbitts, it's Detective Lewis!" She called, "I have a few questions I need to ask."

All there was, for a few moments was silence until the click of a lock slid behind echoed through the hall. Slowly the door opened, barely a crack, revealing a young looking blonde woman, a bruise on her porcelain cheek. Her golden hair was greasy and disheveled and Morgan looked at the victim with sympathy.

"Hi..." The woman whimpered, opening the door to let the detective in. Morgan stepped inside and saw the entire apartment a mess. "I'm sorry about the mess..."

"No, no it's fine." Morgan smiled, "But...I need to talk to you about...your rapist Ms. Abbitt."

The woman whined and walked to the kitchen. "I told you, I didn't see much...it happened too fast. I hit him...something cracked. I think he stung me with something... He left a little...thing on my dress..."

"Centipede venom. Luckily, we have some things you were able to give us to compare DNA to when we find him...but Ms. Abbitt, we have...quite a few centipede mutants in the city, so we need...your help, is there anything that stuck out? A smell, a sound? Anything?"

"I don't know what you want me to say."

"You're the only living victim Ms. Abbitt." Morgan pushed, "the venom killed the other six. Please, you're the only one who can put the pieces together."

The woman grew silent, back facing her. Morgan's heart grew heavy and she sighed This was the worst part of the job, in her opinion. Forcing the victims to relive the worst moments of their lives. But, she always told herself this, it's for the greater good. It'll give them closure. It got one last dirt bag off the street, so it had to be worth it...right?

"Oranges. He smelled like oranges." Ms. Abbitt whispered almost to the air. Morgan sighed and laid a hand on her shoulder.

"Thank you." The brunette smiled gratefully and walked back outside. Oranges, that was just what they needed. Oranges. Of the 35 centipede mutants in New York, only one worked at a bakery. In that bakery they specialized in marmalade cupcakes! She practically ran into her Camaro and didn't even bother to fasten her seat belt.

"What, it get too intense for you in there?" Raph teased only to be hit in the bicep. Hard. He yelped and rubbed the sore spot as she turned the siren on, on her dashboard.

"Next time, you talk to the victim. I just got us a lead, huge one!" He sent her a dirty look while she floored it. Oh yes, despite it all, today was good.


	5. Sixty-Five Percent

"So lemme get this straight," Raph asked as he shut the door of the car and adjusted his belt. God he still hated pants. "This girl says there's a centipede mutant that raped her, so that's why I got called in?"

The building in front of them was rather neat and cute from the outside, nice pink and green banners hanging on the outside, Halloween pumpkins sitting in the window display, and a cheerful print reading "Clementine's" was printed across the door, right next to a generic cartoon redhead girl with braces, smiling widely. The place seemed so friendly and welcoming it was hard to imagine any criminal actually bothering to work there, but Raph supposed that it might be a pretty good cover anyway.

Morgan rolled her eyes as she got out of her own Camaro and walked into the bakery, "No, the other girls are dead, you worked homicide, that's why."

Raph scowled at his partner when a teenage girl with rainbow colored hair smiled at them, looking up from the cash register. The place was filled with cakes and cupcakes of all shapes, colors, and sizes, and after a quick peek inside the cupcake cabinets in front of the register, Raph wondered if it was even possible to capture a rainbow and turn it into sugar. "Welcome to Clementine's Bakery! May I interest you in our vegan gluten free-"

He silenced the girl by waving his badge, not interested in any of this vegan nonsense. He liked his milk and meat thank you very much. Morgan gave him an appreciative glance as he set a hand on the counter, "We're looking for Guillermo Baker." That name was still so awkward, still so...cringe worthy. He looked at her name tag and read: Rain. He suppressed an eye roll, this was hippie central. "Is he here?"

Rain blinked, turning pale as she whispered, "I-Is Memo in trouble?"

Morgan raised a brow and Raph snorted but he shook his head, "No," he cleared his throat and tried not to laugh, "We just wanna talk to him."

Rain nodded and lifted a finger to show she'd be right back and called out back something in Spanish. Raph turned to Morgan questioningly, a vegan baker named 'Memo' didn't seem like a serial killer. But she didn't pay any attention as the centipede mutant crawled out. His face looked humanoid along with his torso (just with 4 sets of arms) but his bottom half had all the legs of a normal centipede. Both detectives heard the steady click of hundreds of legs hitting the tile as the baker took off his apron and smiled, a pair of pitchers on his top lip.

"Hola," he waved two hands on his right side as the top pair rung together nervously. "I-I understand you need to see me?"

He got out from behind the counter and Raph wondered how many sets of handcuffs he would need to restrain him anyway. "Yes. Guillermo Baker, you are under arrest for the rape and murder of-" Morgan continued on the Miranda while the centipede and young girl began to protest, eyes wide and fearful.

"Wait what? Murder?! Rape?! Memo would never-"

"Que? Que? I no hurt anybody! Rain ayuda me!"

Raph had to keep Rain away from the suspect as Morgan gently handcuffed his dominant legs and guided him out the door. He didn't put up a physical fight, just kept asking questions and looking terrified. Rain began crying, probably very attached to her employer, and tore out of Raph's grip. Though really, Detective Hamato was unsure of what to do with a crying teenage female and let her go. She placed her hands on the window where Mr. Baker looked back at her. She blubbered nonsense and he shook his head. This wasn't right, something was off. No way could this guy have done what Lewis said.

"How long for that translator?" Morgan asked impatiently as she paced in front of the interrogation room. Mr. Baker mirrored her movements, occasionally opening his mouth to murmur every now and again in Spanish. Raphael watched from his spot against the wall. Daniels glanced between the two concernedly, especially Morgan since she was looking more focused than she had ever been during an investigation.

"Twenty minutes, and the DNA should confirm that this is the guy shortly." Their Captain said and Morgan growled in frustration. She wanted to know now, it had been occupying her thoughts for what felt like weeks, and she needed to bust this guy, throw him in jail, and then move onto the next criminal that needed a whooping. Raph hated the tension and finally leaned forward, away from the wall.

"Maybe I should try. I mean he speaks...a little English and maybe he'll feel more comfortable with another mutant then the chick who slapped cuffs on him."

Both turned to him and while Morgan rolled her eyes for the thousandth time, Daniel gave a thumbs up. "Worth a try. Go for it."

Raph nodded and entered the room, case folder in hand, which caused Guillermo to stop. He turned to the Detective, pale and his eyes wide in fright as Raph shook his head. This wasn't the guy, no way, he was sitting down politely now and waiting to hear his fate. The criminals he had met before couldn't act this well, unless they weren't acting.

"Mr. Baker," he spoke curtly but before Raph could say anything else, the centipede launched forward and latched onto his shoulders and shook them in panic.

"Por favor, I didn't do nothing, this is a mistake! Yo nun a daño a nadie, esto es un error!"

Raphael pushed the other mutant off him and scowled, "Get off o' me," and when Guillermo was seated in one of the chairs the Detective sighed. "Listen, Mr. Baker-"

"Memo." The suspect corrected, causing Raphael to rub his temples. Memo. Who in their right mind goes around as Memo? That's what Mikey used to call Finding Nemo when he lost his baby teeth and Splinter managed to find a copy of the movie from the sewer pipes that was salvageable in a pinch.

"Memo then, you're in some serious trouble. Rape and murder...that's a hefty load, A class felony, life in jail. Even if you don't have any strikes. If you cooperate, I could talk to the DA about this, but-"

"But I didn't do anything!" He protested, "Please you must believe me! I-I have...coartada!"

Raph shook his head and hit the table in frustration, "English! I don't know what that means! Look I'm trying to help you but you're not giving me anything."

His outburst frightened the suspect whimpered with wide eyes. Raphael massaged his forehead with one large hand when Memo mustered up the courage to speak again. His voice was shaking and insecure, but just loud enough for Raph to hear him.

"I am...I am a fifty-seven percent señor, life is very hard. Humans...are very mean to my kind. I am many things, but I am not a killer." He shut his mouth and calmly slinked back into silence.

Raphael paused at this, Baker's words hitting hard. The poor guy was just under sixty percent human. He was so close. He sighed and leaned back on his own chair. He was waiting to read his own results with his brothers over pizza, right after he got off work for the night. Fear began to gnaw at his stomach thinking of it. Would he lose his job if he was any less than sixty like Baker was? Who would hire him after that? He shook his head and continued with the interrogation.

"You're venom says otherwise. It killed those six girls." He pulled out the photos of the victims found at the crime scene and slowly set them in front of Memo. "Lacey Parker, Hannah Garcia, Danielle Schneider, Georgia Matthews, Dorothy Hale and Olivia Marsden. They ring any bells? Because they all died of heart failure from contaminated centipede venom in their system, all in the last month."

"Venom? Que? You are mistaken!"

"What? You gonna tell me that centipedes don't have venom?"

"No, we do. Because...I'm only fifty-seven percent human, my venom glands were removed as a condition of becoming citizen. And Señor, I was not even in this city until last week."

Raph raised both brows, "Can you prove that?"

Memo nodded, "Mi Amor, m-my boyfriend, he was with me along with mi abuela and mi hermanas. We were at Bogota, C-Columbia to visit his family and dying to do it for at least three months, we did not get back until...miércoles...um Wednesday. We flew, my abuela still has the tickets."

"Do you know what airline?"

"Um...Delta, flight..." Memo grew quiet in thought then snapped his fingers on three of his hands on his right hand. "Flight 022309, I remember because that's mi hermana's birthday, that's right."

Raph frowned, a gay baker that made vegan foods who was out of the country until just recently. This guy wasn't the perp, this was one dang good alibi, and he knew that it couldn't have been it from the moment the cuffs went on. "Alright...I'll talk to my captain."

Memo looked nervous at the detective's angry attitude and shook his head with a whine, hitting his head onto the table. Little tears leaked from his eyes. Raph looked down at the mutant across from him and stood up. A cold hearted killer wouldn't be blubbering like this in front of him. He would be bragging, cocky, not a puddle of flat out pathetic. Raphael wasn't going to get anymore from him now, so he walked back out of the interrogation room. Morgan still paced as Daniel's flipped through papers and the M.E stood beside him, chewing a piece of gum.

"I'm telling you, I checked twice. DNA doesn't match." The medical examiner, Dr. Wolcott, explained. Raph blinked.

"What?"

"The contaminated centipede venom, I initially thought it was mutant, but now comparing it to Mr. Baker's DNA, since he wouldn't give up any venom and found that the venom found at the crime scene wasn't contaminated with human DNA but with cyanide." She explained, popping the bubble she formed.

"Cyanide?" Raph asked as Daniel's handed him the folder with lab results. He skimmed over the report.

"Well the thing is, he doesn't have venom. He had his...I don't know venom thingies removed so he could be a citizen. Plus, he has an alibi, if we call the airline, I'm sure we can confirm it."

Morgan sighed, mostly out of disappointment. "Damn it...I was sure I had him."

They all grew silent and Raph handed the file back to Wolcott. "You sure that this victim wasn't making this up?"

Morgan tensed, face relaxing a little, more out of confusion than rage. "What?"

"Maybe she's making this up. This doesn't match up and you cleared most of the other centipede mutants because most are still kids. All I'm saying-"

That was when she started to get frustrated.

"We have bodies Hamato! We have proof! This isn't a clear cut Homicide, where you don't see the light gone in a victims eyes! I met with this girl! No way was she faking any of this!" She got up into his face, clearly angered at what he said. He sighed, narrowing his eyes a little.

"It doesn't make sense. After 6 victims he wouldn't slip up in making sure they won't finger him. I might not handle victims, but I know how killers work. I've been doing this kind of thing a lot longer-"

She growled in frustration and pointed a finger, "You're just arrogant and insensitive-"

"Excuse me, but you're-" He felt like strangling her. His blood boiled as this human continued on insulting him.

"Enough the both of you!" Daniel's exclaimed causing both to pull back at look at their captain. His jolly exterior had suddenly been replaced with this tougher shell nobody ever saw. Until now, that was. The older officer looked more than a little anger as he crossed his arms over his chest. "What is this, third grade?! Grow up or do I need to send you back to the academy?!"

"No sir." They both grumbled, looking down to the floor.

"Then pull it together! Now, all these victims must've had a connection. Figure it out. Please. I have other things to do."

They nodded and walked out as their Captain released Mr. Baker and apologized for the misunderstanding. Both were silent as she walked to her desk to confirm the flight and Raphael looked over the plasma screen at the facts they had so far. He studied it and looked over the faces.

"This doesn't make sense." He said as Morgan looked up, phone pressed to her ear and put on hold.

"What?"

"The victims. They all look different and are from different boroughs. Lacey Parker was blonde and from Manhattan, Hannah Garcia, a Hispanic, was from Brooklyn, Danielle Schneider was a brunette with blue eyes from on Staten Island, Georgia Matthews was a red head from the Bronx, Dorothy Hale was African American in Queens and Olivia Marsden is Arabic and from Jersey. Normally serial anything, rapist, killer, sticks to a pattern but...I'm not finding one."

"Maybe he's doing a cycle. Brown is blonde and from Manhattan. The next one might be Hispanic." Morgan pointed out then pulled the phone back up and lifted the phone back up, "Hello? Yes, NYPD, I need to confirm the tickets of a Mr. Guillermo Baker?"

Raph tapped his chin and shook his head, "No, he'd have a type and stick with it. And now our profile is out the window because it wasn't even mutant centipede venom..."

"Thank you." Morgan hung up and looked over at him with narrowed eyes, "His alibi checks out but that doesn't mean it wasn't a centipede mutant! Olivia says that's what she saw."

"It doesn't make sense, look I know, most mutants who have venom or anything like that have their fangs and stuff removed or else they won't be allowed a citizenship. It's probably not a mutant at all. It wouldn't be the first time a witness lied for attention."

Morgan scowled and kicked her desk. "Crap. She was our only connection to all of them."

Raph raised a brow and turned her, "Mind sharing with the class?"

Morgan stuck her tongue out at him and then turned to the screen, "All these victims were on different dating sites, but they all met at the bakery that Brown worked at. That was the only thing they had in common."

"Dating sites?"

"Yeah, Garcia was on eharmony, Parker was on RomanceQuick, Hale was on Match, Matthews was on Christian Mingle, Marsden was of Two4Ever and Schneider was on Zoosk." Morgan explained when she blinked. Her face grew pale and she she rushed over to her computer, "But we never asked about the person they met. That's how he knew Brown and the other six! You check on who Parker, Garcia and Schneider while I take Matthews, Hale and Marsden."

Her partner nodded and walked over to his own desk, beginning to pull up leads. They both worked silently, calling and clicking away on the keyboard for the connection they were hoping for.

"I got it. Matthews, Hale and Marsden met a...Romeo Romero. It's an alias but to pay for the sites...he used stolen credit cards, I got the insurance reports. Crap. Do you have anything?" Morgan asked exasperated and Raph continued to check. She rolled her chair behind him to peak over his shoulder.

Raphael froze, uncomfortable with a foreign human he didn't particularly like being so close and tried to push her away with a giant hand but the brunette persisted hovering over him. He rolled his eyes, continuing with looking through the records, his least favorite part of the job.

"Well...I got Romeo for Garcia and Schneider with fake cards too, but for Parker I got a credit card account for a..."

Morgan leaned over his shoulder even more, causing Raphael to huff in annoyance, reading the screen with wide eyes. "Please tell me there's a claim of stolen identity."

He turned to her and shook his head, "No. Dr. Edward Brown and his sister Olivia Brown share the account. Edward has a PHD in...Myriapodology? Is that a thing? Did I even say it right? What the heck is that?"

"You think I know? Google it!"

Raph shrugged and pulled up another tab, typing it in and making a few spelling mistakes along the way. "In English, the study of Centipedes. And Olivia, our 'victim'," He put air quotes on the word and pulled up her page, "was fired from Clementine's right before Guillermo took her job as head baker."

Morgan ran a hand over her face as she stood up, stalking over to her desk to grab her jacket. "Come on. I wanna see the look on her fake face when I slap cuffs on her."

Raphael nodded and followed her, grabbing his keys and smirking, "This time I'm driving."

Morgan nodded, "Fine but I'm not getting in that piece of scrap metal you call a car. Use mine." She tossed him her own keys. Raph caught them, not putting up a fight. He walked to work most days for a reason, the car he got was affordable not function, and he didn't mind driving a Camaro.

"Fine by me." He shrugged and the two detectives made it down the stairs. He watched her and noticed how wound up she was. Her shoulders were tense, her fists were clenched and she looked ready to kill.

Raphael briefly wondered if that was how he looked when his brothers saw him and his temper was flaring. Out of control, on a one course plain and unmovable like a runaway train. But he didn't say anything, not really having any reason to and made it outside.

They got into the Camaro, Morgan slamming the door on her way into the passenger's side. He put the keys in the ignition and punched it, weaving through traffic and putting on the siren to get there as soon as possible.

Morgan pulled out her piece and checked the clip before putting it all together again. She sighed and placed it back in her holster and bit her lip in thought before turning to the driver.

"What did Baker mean, fifty-seven percent?" She asked and Raphael nearly hit the breaks in shock. He had no idea where that came from or why she would've cared. He cocked his head to the side, glancing at her from the corner of his eye.

"Why do you care?" He rolled his shoulders and dodged the question. He gripped over the steering wheel and looked at the road instead of his partner. If he noticed he would've seen her shift toward him and furrow her brows.

"You tensed up when he said it. So it's gotta mean something."

He grew quiet and let out a puff of air, thinking on how to explain it to a nonmutant...

"It's how human you are. Mutants gotta take a test telling them how much human and how much...whatever else is in there. The limit for getting married and havin' kids is sixty. If you're just a little off, you're not allowed to get married to a human, or have kids even if you could with that low of a number. Some companies, most really, fire you or won't even give you a shot if you're not sixty. He's only a few point off, but it matters, A LOT. So he's treated as a minority when they're mutants out there who are twenty percent and are way crazier."

His voice was quiet, but angry as he spoke of the injustice of it. Morgan listened and was at a loss of words. The anger on her face didn't fade, but now she looked a furious for a whole different reason. Her jaw clenched and she whispered so softly he couldn't make it out.

"Sorry."

"Don't you understand? You freaks belong in a zoo! You're stealing our jobs and-" Olivia ranted to Raphael as Morgan pushed her into an empty pen while her partner trailed behind with her brother.

"Please this is a terrible mistake, I'm a respected member of the board-"

"Save it for someone who cares ya sickos." Raph growled, shoving Edward in and locking the cell. Olivia ran over to the bars and grabbed the sleeve of Morgan's jacket, eyes wide and full of desperation.

"Please Detective Lewis, you of all people should understand, those things-"

"Those things are people. Who have just as much right to live and breathe like you do. They don't need to be put up in prison cells because they haven't done anything wrong."

"But that stupid little centipede freak stole my-" Olivia tried to protest but Morgan grabbed the collar of her shirt and yanked her into the bars, the only thing separating the two. Edward yelped and tried to pull his sister back by yanking at her arm. Morgan growled and narrowed her eyes, keeping her grip onto the perp.

"All Guillermo Baker did was do a better job then you. He's more human than you will ever be you disgusting piece of slime." Morgan then let go causing both brother and sister to fall on their backs. Ella gave an indignant huff had the nerve to look at Raphael who stood outside the cell.

"You just saw that right? She just assaulted me!"

"I didn't see nothin'." He smirked and Olivia huffed again. She began to go on a tangent about NYPD corruption but neither Lewis nor Raph cared. They walked away from the cell and to the desks, Raphael had his hands in his jacket pockets while Morgan put her gun and badge into her locker.

"You okay there killer? You seemed a bit worked up." He asked sarcastically and she sighed.

"Fine...sorry about uh...earlier. You forget how a fresh set of eyes helps when you've been looking at something the wrong way."

He shrugged, "Nah its fine. It was your case, I get how it is."

Morgan nodded when his custom ringtone, that annoying Atari song he had on his old T-phone, went off. His face heated in embarrassment as Morgan snickered at his expense. He grumbled as she began to double over in laughter and answered angrily.

"What?!"

"Dude!" Mikey answered excitedly, his brothers snapping not dampening his ecstatic mood, "Get over here! Leo's letter just got in! You gotta get here so we can find out our results, Donnie's dying to open his! Come on you gotta meet us at the shop and hurry up!"

"Fine whatever. I'll be there in fifteen." Raphael grumbled and hung up as Morgan covered her grinning mouth.

"W-who was that?" She asked between snickers. He rolled his electric green eyes and huffed.

"My idiot brother. We just got our percentage results today and were opening them together. I gotta get going." Raph stated and she stopped laughing instantly.

"Wait...you don't know your-"

"Nope."

The two grew silent and Raph formed his hands into fists while grinding his teeth and he waited. Waited for the threat of going to the Captain. Waiting for the accusation and the teasing.

"Well, good luck then." Was all she said, catching him by surprise. His eyes widened and he blinked, nodding slowly.

"Thanks." He then stated on his way and glanced back at her as he left. She was moving back to her desk, answering phone and smiling at whoever was on the other end. For a human...she wasn't so bad...

\----------------------------------

"I don't have to pay you for this, right?" Donnie looked up with a slight smile, face still full of pizza as he said it. His younger brother laughed and shook his head, dismissing it with a small wave of his arm. They were all having their own money problems, and he wouldn't dare charge his own brother for food. The fact that he was eating it was enough of a sign for him to be pleased with the situation, still squirming around in his chair waiting for Raph.

"I like the feel of the place." Leo commented quietly. "It's...homey. You did a good job Mikey." Just seeing the smile on his face made Mikey copy one.

"I tried extra hard, dudes. You're still my first customers. But you can fix that." He gave a wink, leaning further and further back in his chair until it was precariously balancing on a single leg. "That is why we're here too..."

"Ah, ah." Donnie picked up his envelope, waving it back and forth. "This first. Where's Raph anyways?"

"He gets off pretty late. Maybe got hung up." Leo shrugged, crossing his arms over his chest. Truth be told he didn't really keep track of his brother and his shenanigans all that often, they were so busy, eve when they had the time to slow down and play drunken poker where Donnie groaned and held his head half the time, while the other half he was giggling over getting even a small gain. Those were good times, they made him crack a smile.

He glanced down at his phone. Still no texts from Karai. He wasn't sure if they could still meet up, they had constantly been pushing the back the date since their chat and he was afraid he might have to push it back again. His eyes flickered up to his brothers, blissfully unaware, and then back down to his phone. They didn't need to know just as much as Splinter wouldn't know. For a long time since that final fight...they were left not knowing. And it was Leo's job to pick up the glass shards, to sweep them away for good. Images that started flashing in his mind he stopped abruptly as Raph came in, a little bell above the door jingling and bringing attention to himself that he seemed to take in a little more eagerly than normal, giving a light noogie to Mikey.

"Hey. Sorry about that, new partner, getting used to it." He huffed, sitting down and stealing a slice of pizza from the mixed plate at the center of the table, dropping his envelope in the center along with the others. "Let's get this over with."

The excitement that flashed through Don's eyes wasn't containable, and he snatched his up, tearing into it immediately before Mikey could say "1, 2, 3." His eyes scanned over it, and Raph watched as his mouth curled into a smile like he had when he got his certificate of education in the mail, or the acceptance letter for the university job. "Sixty-Six. On the nose." He chirped, tossing the papers back down on the table. "I qualify for everything, eat it, I knew I was meant for this world." He bragged.

"Okay lover-boy, we can't be too far off then, you're not all that special." Raph snickered, picking his up and popping the letter out. "Ha. Sixty-Eight. Chew on that." He smirked, shoving the entire slice into his mouth and chewing messily, propping his feet up on the table so he could watch Donnie read over his results with his own eyes.

"It also says you're at high risk for developing liver issues and blood clots." Donnie raised an eyebrow, then laughed. "You gotta lay off the pizza." He murmured under his breath, tossing the sheet back onto the table with a quick whisk.

Leo tore into his next, followed by Mikey, but the younger one got to it first. At first he seemed worried, but after looking it over he simply smiled and nodded. "Sweet...sixty-three." He seemed pleased, but on the inside he knew that he had just barely made it. Just barely snagged a spot in society, and as he looked among his happy brothers he almost felt out of place until they nodded and congratulated him, especially since Donnie pointed out that he came back healthier than they had in terms of risks for health, Donnie chalking up to possible joint problems later.

Leo opened his discretely since nobody else was paying attention to him, too busy talking to Mikey. When he pulled the sheets out there was a lot of medical garble that he looked over without a second thought, instead just looking for the bold charts. Then he saw it, the charts. A risk for cataracts, something or other, he skipped over all of that, simply staring at the number they put him down for.

It had to be a mistake.

Among his brothers' happy laughing and talking, he sat there trying to fake a smile. Sixty-five, teetering on the edge of a sixty-four. Raph was more human than he was. He shouldn't have to care about the stupid sibling rivalry but it was starting to hurt the more he stared at it. He tucked it back into the envelope, calmly grabbing a slice of pizza, but on the inside he was boiling.

Sixty-five? A sixty-five? What kind of a joke was that? Maybe they got the readings wrong, maybe they screwed up and the blood and tissue samples weren't pure enough. It had to be, maybe they got contaminated before they tested them. He just wouldn't accept that low of a number when he felt so much more mature than his brothers were. He knew that getting mutated was just some sick game of roulette. Maybe he and Mikey got less mutagen than their brothers did. He had assumed it had been an equal spread. Why wasn't it? They should have been the same.

He had to be more human than that.


	6. Crash and Burn

Leo woke up with crust in his eyes, rubbing it away and sighing. Truth be told he probably overreacted last night and none of it had to matter. Still he turned over in bed and picked up his phone, swiping to turn off the alarm he had set. Sixty-five. One measly number had gotten him so worked up, and for humans, they hardly had to worry about something as dumb as a number because they didn't have to worry at all. They were pure bred. Forever.

He swallowed. It was horribly out of character for him to lose his cool like that. Maybe he had just been especially stressed. That had to be it. The day had been long, and some of his students just couldn't grasp some of the concepts he was teaching, and now he was waking up to live a day full of the same frustrations. He sat up, browsing through his social media feeds. He had no friends, so having it made no sense anyway.

Then a text.

To be honest he knew exactly where it was coming from. Raph woke up at these hours, but he never texted, not unless it was an emergency. And Splinter could hardly figure out how cellphones worked since Donnie kept modifying it and downloading apps for him so he hardly used it, letting it gather dust on the desk in his small office. Leo's eyes scanned carefully over the words. Once. Twice. Maybe three times, he lost count.

**Hope you didn't forget about lunch today.**

He frowned. He had, but she didn't need to know that, he had just been busy with percentages and medical information rolling around in his skull. They had already moved the date so many times anyway, it was hard to remember when it had been adjusted six or seven times.

**No, I didn't. Are you sure that you don't want Splinter to come? He deserves this.**

**Don't bring him, or I cancel this lunch.**

Leo sighed and rubbed his head, more specifically, his temples. It wasn't like they had to be secretive anymore, hiding everything from his father. They were adults and Karai was free to make her own decisions. Didn't she want to talk to her biological father? Didn't she want to have anything to do with him? Still he had to answer, he needed to talk to her after the incident, so he decided to let the anger go.

**Fine. See you then.**

He decided he needed time to cool off. Something was wrong. This boiling was something that Raph got, not him. He was the cooler brother, the collected one. Meditation. Yes, meditation would work.

He skipped breakfast, heading straight into the living room and moving the shabby coffee table out of the way, crossing his legs and setting his hands in his lap. Deep breaths. His focus only faltered slightly, but after clearing his head he found it rather easy to sit there and not move a muscle, thinking about nothing but the cover of his eyelids and the darkness it brought.

Then a distraction.

_"You make me tired of this." His voice growled, followed by the sharp sound of metal touching metal. Leo dodged and rolled past the sound. It was like a retreat at this point. He had to get away. "Just let it go, die like your brothers."_

_He shook his head, searching for a smoke bomb. None left. He used them up just 15 minutes prior when he accidentally dropped them in a scramble for his blade. His heart pounded in his head. It hurt him, he was running out of stamina for the first time in his life, and he couldn't do anything but keep using it in big bursts. His foot slid out from under him as he skidded across the floor. His hands gripped the wall to keep him upright and he jumped just as the man took another swing at him._

_A frustrated grunt as his body slammed onto the floor. His adrenaline kept him from feeling too much of the pain, but he couldn't help but feel the blades cutting and slicing into his leg and the hard boot pulling his arm from its socket. He yelped but couldn't move, paralyzed in the moment and unable to use his leg for much else but desperate kicking on the ground. It did nothing really except for give the notorious Shredder a reason to laugh at him._

His eyes opened. Obviously meditation wouldn't work, a sharp pain flying through his leg at the speed of sound, his hands shaking, his heart beating. It was like it happened all over again, he could feel the blades. He could feel all the trauma again. That was years ago, right before he...

His phone went off again. He glanced at the time. 12 minutes had passed since Leo had started meditation. That felt impossible. He wasn't in trouble or anything. It was just an alarm that reminded him he had work in an hour.

So it began.

\----------------------------------

Donnie rubbed the sleep from his eyes as he nudged the door open with his elbow. He got there earlier because he didn't have a lecture until later and figured he might as well waste the day away in the library working on figuring out answers for his questions, mason jar tumbling around in his bag. The library was big, a huge skylight illuminating the room with the dim light of a clouded sky. He smiled.

He grabbed a table, all alone. There weren't many other people there, a few students sleeping on their text books as if osmosis would work for their exams. It was so quiet there that it did tend to bother him when he heard some of them wake up and scramble out the doors to their classes. He checked the wall clock. Lunch time. They had some time to get there. Not like he really cared much.

The first few questions he pulled out were related to anatomy. Inappropriate anatomy, and his upper lip curled in disgust, crumpling them up in his fists. He couldn't exactly get mad though. They were only college students. The rest were questions about childhood, and he picked out a few to answer, but he soon grew bored of it, looking around at each of the shelves. They reached to the sky, with large ladders needed to get to some of the balconies nearer to the archives. Archives...if he squinted he could see just how old and worn down those books were. He wondered what they were about.

He stuffed his things back into his bag and made a quick pit stop by the coffee machine, disappointment settling in when he saw the sign about no more coffee filters. He needed a pick-me up, and that was all he could get until all his lectures were over. He drummed his fingers on the counter for a moment, checking a few cabinets, and was about to take off when a box of them dropped next to his hand. He looked up and found a woman about his age pulling a clump of filters out for him and handing them to him sheepishly.

"I forgot to restock, sorry about that." She murmured, wringing her hands and brushing off her jeans. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail that must've looked much neater earlier in the day, but soft blonde waves were starting to poke their way free of their prison. He smiled.

"Not a problem." Donnie murmured back, taking them up in his hands and setting them into the machine. She seemed afraid, and for a good reason as he saw it. The only mutant teacher in this school could crush her with both his hands, and all he could feel was remorse for just being what he was where he was. When he looked up again she was looking through the freezer and probably debating in her head whether she would pick up the bottle water or the soda. She ultimately settled on water.

"I do more than restock coffee filters, no worries." She laughed to herself nervously, and stored the bottle in her purse. "I'll try to keep on top of that."

"No, I-...I mean I understand, everyone has their moments." He shrugged.

She stared at him for a while, bewilderedly. As if nobody had ever taken coffee filters as such a light thing in their lives. "Yeah, everybody." Her smile brightened, and then she turned towards the door. He stopped her though.

"Wait, uh...you work in the library, right?"

"Sort of. I guess." She bit her lip. "Archivist and assistant. Why?"

"That must be interesting."

Small talk was torturous. He didn't really like it all that well, and from what he could tell, he was putting her through the exact same torture by prolonging it. He chuckled a little, but he knew that to her he must seem like a wreck, he hadn't slept much and needed to talk to someone on campus to get familiar.

She shrugged and nodded a little out of sync with her facial expressions. "It can be from time to time, certainly never boring." Her smile faded and then she took one step through the doorway. "You should go look through the archives sometime, there's a lot of good teaching material in there."

"I should." He smiled, watching her leave. His shoulders slumped and even the beeping of the coffee machine startled him. He couldn't do this, he wasn't going to make any friends like this. His current state was miserable, as long as he was a mutant small talk was as far as things were going to go, even if he were a campus celebrity. The coffee poured into his cup slowly, quietly, a lot like how he left the library to head back to the lecture hall.

_"We're getting married!" April laughed, letting Casey spin her around in his arms before setting her down as if she were on display. Leo congratulated them and Raph gave a few harsh pats on the back to knock Casey over. Mikey was humming wedding music, Splinter was giving advice, Donnie was faking his smiles. They hurt and it couldn't be helped. He should've been over it now that he was more than 20, he was an adult, he could handle adult situations, so why did it sting so much?_

_When April and Casey started dating it hadn't stung like that. Maybe like a Band-Aid getting ripped off but that was it. Now it was something different boiling inside of him, he typed away at his essays and tried to ignore the singing and the chatter and the champagne. But it still hurt. Of course things weren't going to turn out like that. April had already given him signals to let him know it wouldn't. Or maybe she didn't. Maybe she really didn't._

Donnie frowned, taking a deep sip out of the coffee from his thermos. He started writing away at the chalkboard to distract himself. There was no means reminiscing on the past. No reason for him to even consider it. Life had changed and so had he, so comparing that incident to this was pointless.

He was over it.

\----------------------------------

Mikey had posters all over the city now. He had people visiting before he was even open and he gave them samples just so he wouldn't turn them away. The big night was coming up and he was admittedly nervous about opening just in case his food wasn't as phenomenal as he hoped it would be. With the date lurking in his head he was already preparing food. Though he didn't have numbers, he has spirit to replace it with.

When the morning of the date came he woke up with more vigor than anyone else on the street could handle. His skateboarding down the street caused many a curse to be thrown his way as he toppled over taxis, accidentally ran into people, and frightened children with his form. Like Mikey cared. All he cared about was all the baking he would have to do. And cleaning. And dancing. The dancing to keep his spirits high.

As the hours of the day passed more and more pizzas left the oven and more and more songs looped on the jukebox. He lost count of how much he had baked in one day, that is until he ran out of pepperoni and had to stop to buy more. With a mere couple of hours left on the line he couldn't afford to sit around and run out of pizzas to serve. He flipped off the lights, locked the door, and began the long ride down to the supplier, the moon beginning to peek through the clouds just as sunset came for them.

The supplier was far. Very far. He forgot how long it took to get there though, he had much bigger things on his mind. Friends, the excitement of owning a business, and finally having a name for himself in the city. Maybe even the world. He couldn't get over himself.

A forty five minute ride and back wasn't expected to go like it did. The return to the shop wasn't supposed to sting so much. His happy-go-lucky attitude was primed and ready to meet customers and at first he wasn't all that disappointed that he saw no line outside. Glittering objects glinted in the early moonlight and as he came closer he saw that it was glass on the concrete. He slowed down to a stop and felt tears burning in his eyes as he looked at his shop.

The windows were smashed. There was graffiti all over the brick work. The door had been forcefully kicked down and without even heading inside he could see that the things inside were ruined. All the hard work he had longed for had been ground into dust. The tears in his eyes leaked away down his cheeks as he let out a small sob.


	7. Denial

There was something about having to wake up in the morning that was especially painful that morning. Mikey felt dry tears cracking on his cheeks as he sat up and reached for his phone. His thumb brushed over the cracked screen lightly but he didn't turn it on. He didn't want to answer all the messages from Raph that he knew he was going to get. He didn't want to be reminded of all the pictures he took for the insurance company that were still sitting in his phone's gallery waiting to be opened and printed.

His voice was dry and crackly as he unlocked his phone and stared down at all the messages he had. One from each brother and a few from friends and acquaintances he had made along his journey towards being a citizen. He opened Raph's messages first and replied to a few quick questions, then got up out of bed and grabbed the sweatshirt he had thrown across the floor, halfway into the bathroom, with pizza sauce stains on the hood. He hardly ever washed it, thinking that it was good luck, but according to fate from the night before, luck was nonexistent. All his dreams were compressed into nothingness with smashed windows and graffiti all over it.

He walked into his small rinky dink kitchen and stared at the microwave clock. He had to meet Raph in thirty minutes by the shop even though he felt like curling up in bed and never speaking to anyone again. He pulled a breakfast burrito out from the freezer and decided to eat it without it even being defrosted as he stepped down the stairs and out into the lobby. He didn't even make eye contact with the person that sat behind the counter every single day, and once he reached the outside world he pulled his sweatshirt around his arms even closer, shielding his eyes from the light. The city was glowing, but Mikey's face...just wasn't.

As he approached the place, glass still glimmering in the early morning light, he saw Raph standing outside with a few other men, looking around the place with caution tape and walkie-talkies. His job was so professional that for a minute it made him smile to see his older brother so happy, but then the frown came back again. Everyone else could be happy, but fate was dictating other ideas.

"Mike." Raph nodded as he saw his little brother round the corner and step up onto the curb. He avoided glass shards as best as he could as one man with dark curly hair started sweeping the bits and pieces into a tipped over trash can. "How're you...how're you holding up?"

"Trying." Mikey whined a little as he crossed his arms and looked away. The hole in the shattered window looked like a gash and felt like one on his insides, but at least he wasn't crying anymore. Just cringing internally with each breathe he took where he had to stare at the ruins of all his hard work. His money, wasted.

"Look, I'm gonna find out who did this to you." He frowned. "And when I do, I'm going to smash them so hard into the ground that-" He stopped and sighed, forgetting that he had to control himself before the others started to file a report over how he couldn't keep himself under control for long enough to stay at a crime scene without freaking out. The threat to take the case away was very real, but he needed to know about it. He needed to get under the skin of the person or people that did this to his brother so he could destroy them. Slowly. Painfully. He brought control back to his system with a simple breath.

"Sorry." He finished, noticing the worried look in his brother's eyes. Mike shook his head and shrugged, bending over and picking up a dulled piece of glass that had been tossed out onto the curb. He turned it over in his palm, then dropped it. This was going to be more than just a little pin prick pain as he crossed his arms and moved past the group to walk inside and survey the damage again.

Another shard of glass got dangerously close to his toes as he walked. "I just want to check the kitchen." He said, trying to force a smile onto his lips.

"They didn't get in there. Farthest they got was a few steps in. The destruction path, ya know." He frowned, looking down at his feet.

Still Mikey insisted on checking and came into the kitchen with a sigh. The oven was still crooked but intact, as well as the rest of the back of the shop. Like Raph had promised, everything was still nicely placed here and there. One of his pizzas was still sitting out on the counter uncooked, the dough sliding off the edge of the counter. He frowned. Then scooped it all back up onto the surface again.

There was something unusual about Mikey's attitude that he didn't like, and he pulled up a chair to sit down. "Hey, Mike? You alright?"

His little brother shook his head and covered his eyes with his bare palms. "It's all gone Raph!" He shouted, though it came out muffled from behind his skin. "I spent so much time on this! So much money, I worked years, its not fair!" His anger exploded into an out of character display as he gripped the edge of a counter, his knuckles turning more white than green as a heaving breath calmed him down again.

"Hey, I told you I was gonna get them. I'm gonna make them pay." Raph said, pounding his fist onto a counter. "Its gonna be alright little brother. I promise."

Mikey nodded, a few baby tears leaking from his eyes in distress. He wiped them away and finished nodding before mouthing out a short "Yeah" and hurrying out of the kitchen.

Raph clenched his teeth and shook his head angrily. He was going to make them pay by shoving their feet down their throats. By stringing them up by their tongues. By...something. He hadn't decided yet as he followed Mikey out and into the street just as the investigators came in to take a look. He refused to let some dumb hate crime get in Mikey's way.

"Hamato." Morgan nodded towards him as she approached. She hadn't been assigned the case and technically neither had he but he was still somehow surprised to see her there as Mikey excused himself for a break from the scene. Raph nodded back, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his leather jacket, identification card jangling around his neck.

"Lewis. Why're you here?"

"I'm the bearer of bad news I'm afraid." She sighed. "You're banned from this case Hamato. Sorry."

"What?!" He looked surprised when really he could see it coming a mile away, he had just needed the action to take place for him to feel especially serious about it, which had worked ten-fold.

"Personal relations and all. Daniels ordered it. Sorry." She shrugged, giving a slight nod to the forensics team as they came in to inspect some evidence too. He grunted and shoved past her.

"We'll just see about that."

\----------------------------------

Don's footsteps led him to the library without much of a thought about it. In fact, he hardly was thinking about where he was going, thumb rubbing over his coffee thermos almost nervously. There was something about the moments in which he forgot why he was going there that bothered him as he pushed open the door into the library. Why did he do what he did? Why was anything the way it was? Philosophy was something he hated when it came to things like this, and as he looked up at the skylight flooding the floor around him in light he noticed a bird swoop around outside. He swallowed, then brought focus back to his system. He was here to grade things. Maybe pick up a book or two if he had time. And still his mind wandered like he were a little kid again.

Where was Elaina? He frowned and had hoped that maybe he could see her again. Why? Well he knew why, but shoved the thoughts violently into the back of his head, refusing to be some dumb middle schooler about it. He was her friend, or at least he hoped so. He needed that kind of thing around Linmoor.

Ever since his departure from the college world into the working force he had been looking for a friend and even if her smile was the only thing he could truly appreciate he liked it. It complimented her features and...before he knew it he closed his eyes and sat down at a table, swallowing a huge gulp of water from his water bottle to wash the bad thoughts away. Her optimism was a blessing in his current state, and he enjoyed getting to talk to her the other day, but his middle school crush days were gone. She was a respected coworker, and there was no way he was getting involved in any other woman drama again. He had a hard time concentrating on grading as he saw her come from the break room with a pile of dusty and torn textbooks piled up in her arms. He smiled a little, frozen in his spot. His muscles wanted him to move but he wouldn't move despite how much he may have willed himself to as the books hit her desk with a solid thump, tossing her side braid over her shoulder awkwardly.

Her hair was a very light shade, lighter than most women he knew that qualified as blonde. It had a slight curl to it from what he could tell from a distance and his heart ached as she pulled the braid apart and her hair roamed freely across her shoulders as she started tossing books onto a wheeled cart not too far away from her disgustingly cluttered desk, a cheap take out box falling from the edge in despair.

She pushed a stray hair from her eye and looked up at him, then gave a little wave. He didn't move. Then he waved, like a delayed reflex that he might want to get checked out. Feelings didn't matter. They were friends. Finally he could walk again, and came closer to her, helping her load the books. "How's your day been?" She asked. He shrugged a little, smile still holding rather proudly.

"Well...grading things. The usual." She didn't seem as nervous as she had the other day. Maybe him being a mutant wasn't really the issue, and he had just been afraid that she would be like...well, nevermind that. Her lips moved and it took a moment for him to process the audio.

"What is it you teach again?"

"Chemical engineering." He smiled and she nodded smoothly. So calm and quiet. Why?

"That sounds like it has the potential to set the place on fire." She teased, looking away from him when she did so. He snorted a little and things settled into an awkward silence again. Painfully awkward as it tended to be when they talked. "Thanks for the help."

"No problem." He smiled and picked up the takeout box off the ground, struggling to get tiny bits of cheap rice out of the carpet but still making the effort despite it.

"Don't worry, I'll pick all that up with a vacuum. It's my fault anyway, I...it's still a bit mushy." She sighed. It was indeed mushy, but from the overcooked rice inside. The box looked older than the rice though, almost as if she had reused it before.

He noticed the picture of the little girl on her desk again and decided to choose that as a subject of conversation to free her. "Who's that?" He nodded towards the picture.

Her face suddenly pounded itself into a bright red shade and she got quiet, looking away. He opened his mouth to apologize but she cut in rather quickly before he could even sound out a vowel. "My daughter. Kimberly."

Daughter. Why did he feel so dumb now? Why had he wanted to know? "She's adorable." He smiled, though in the back of his head that longing started to hurt again, the same way he had been afraid of.

Blah, blah, blah April, April...he couldn't seem to shake the thoughts off.

"Thank you, she's turning 3 in December." She smiled, glancing over the picture faintly. He caught a hint of sadness in her eyes as she said that and again the wheels in his brain started to turn and interests started to pick up again. Why couldn't he help himself from this stupid feeling that April started? Why was he so helpless?

"I'd love to meet her." He said.

He laughed nervously and his voice cracked. Why was this so hard? Why was everything so hard? Think about something depressing, try not to smile too much, but it was too late. He had given himself away, a small snort escaping through his nose as he laughed. She grinned and covered her mouth in a giggle. Well apparently not all was lost that day. No internal organs.

But maybe his pride.

"Yeah? Maybe someday. I'm sure she'd love to meet..." She stopped herself. "Well a mutant I guess...one lives in the apartment building and she really loves her." Her voice got quiet as if afraid she said something wrong, but he shook it off. It was actually a compliment. Most children nowadays were afraid. Their parents taught them to be at least.

"What's her mix?" He asked, facial muscles twisting into a half smile. He looked like a complete dork accidentally and it made her laugh again.

"Pigeon I think. She's my babysitter. A real saint."

Their conversation went on for some time, small talk and laughter. Time passed so quickly. So sweetly. He couldn't help but notice that the hands on the clock were against him when he glanced up at it and practically ran back for his stuff.

"I uh, I have to go!" He called back regretfully. Their talk had been so nice and he couldn't recall having such a nice person talk to him in a while.

"That's alright. Maybe we can talk some other time." She smiled sweetly, tucking a curled hair from in front of her eyes to back behind her ear. She crossed her hands together in front of her body and raised her shoulders in a stretch. He hurried off out the door before he could think much about it, and then his mind was off running circles around itself again.

\----------------------------------

Leo felt bothered as he tossed around in his sheets. Lunch earlier had bothered him immensely yesterday. The silence, the awkward pauses. It was like they were going in reverse after trying so hard to make progress with each other.

_"So how is Raph?" Karai asked, smiling just barely over the brim of her coffee. It was barely touched but she had insisted on ordering it to warm herself up. Even still she wasn't touching the drink all that much, probably out of fear he might judge her worse for chugging it like a pig. "Mikey's okay, Donnie's still a genius?"_

_"They're all good..." He frowned and took a bite of his quiche. The spinach complimented the egg perfectly which is why he chose that diner. Before the MUA being passed he had never really had a good quiche, mainly because Mikey often substituted eggs for chocolate and spinach for algae. The mix was nauseating to say the least. "Splinter misses you."_

_She cleared her throat and stared out the window at the small drizzling on the ground. It looked pretty miserable but the forecast said that things were bound to lighten up sooner or later._

_"Look Leonardo, there are some things I want left alone." She sighed, leaning closer to him across the table. "There are some things that I don't even understand, and...I said too much."_

_"Is this about Saki?"_

_"No." She cut him off before he could elaborate. "He could rot in hell for all I care." Her tone was bitter and held an edge to it he could remember from a few of their first meetings. As her brother he felt bad for everything she had been through within the past few years, and held an open palm out towards her._

_"It's going to be okay. Splinter would understand whatever it is."_

_"Leo...drop it." She sighed._

_"I-_

_"Drop. It." She growled, eyes boring holes right through his being. He nodded and his hand recoiled away. Maybe he'd revisit it another day, but now was apparently just not the right time he realized as he leaned back in his chair and licked his fork._

_"Karai, can I trust you with something I haven't told anyone?" He finally asked._

_"What?"_

He snapped out of it before he could finish reliving the moment, sitting up straight like a plank in bed and rubbing his head. Water was a relief to his dry throat as he swung his feet over the side and gripped the glass between his enormous fingers. Was she really as trustworthy as he had been thinking she was? She clearly didn't trust him to talk about her troubles, and their next lunch was probably going to be months from now. Maybe even years if she kept putting it off like she always did. Whatever life she had sure was busy.

He picked up his phone and started looking through texts on it. Mikey was rebuilding Little Ninja's and by the looks of things Raph had just gotten thrown off the case and was pretty dang pissed about it. They were all worried for Mikey but he knew that their little brother could bounce back from this, even if they did lend a little money here and there. He yawned and crawled back into bed, looking up at the ceiling in forlorn.

He'd never get sleep at this rate.

And at any other time he'd be so positive that everything would turn out alright but between these racists of sorts and Karai hiding things, he wasn't quite sure what to think as he closed his eyes and figured maybe meditation might get him to sleep. As he laid there only one thing continued to cross through his mind as he attempted to sleep.

Sixty-five percent.


	8. Walls

Leo felt his brain dissolve as he stared into the somewhere beyond his bedroom wall. There was nothing there except for a small dent where he had accidentally pushed his nightstand the wrong way, and yet he seemed to be finding the meer action of staring at this dent fascinating. It was like he had been utterly uprooted from his body and given the one task of staring at the dent in the wall, but even as he stared at it he still felt conscious of how almost dead he was feeling. He swallowed dryly.

Sitting up, he felt the desperate need for water overcome him, and for a brief moment the fizz in his mind ceased for long enough to let him process how to get a glass from the cabinet and fill it with tap water. The water was too warm. He drank it anyways. Seemingly, there was nothing that mattered anymore other than the water itself. He had no room to prefer to be picky.

Glancing over a handful of documents that had been spread across his counter, he frowned. Bills. Financial notices. Then, under the entire hefty stack, his results, which still somehow sat there begging to be fawned over. He gave in, grabbing at the packet of papers and flipping through the multiple pages of garbage.

Reading between the lines had always been difficult for him and the others, and yet with each carefully typed word on this report he could almost taste the way each word uttered such a clean and groomed agenda. He thumbed through the stack until he reached the page titled "Medical Information" and skimmed through it quicker than he would a fast food menu. He had seen it multiple times already in glances, but felt like torturing himself by actually bothering to read a few words.

Blue eyes read gaudily dressed words in disgust.

After a hot minute of skimming and sighing and feeling like the paper was staring at him with invisible eyes, his own sleepy eyes caught the dead end of words that he had been dying to see. He coughed and set his little glass down. He needed two hands to grip the wrinkled paper and read it properly, so he held the data as close to his face as he could without exacerbating the eye strain.

"According to psychological evaluation by Dr. Inen, patient may be susceptible to: Depression, Certain Anxiety Disorders, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. This is not a diagnosis, if you would like to ask questions, please call...blah blah blah..."

He blinked, almost as if he had forgotten how to read. It wasn't the first time these words had been spoken to him, just the first time he had read them in this specific order and kind of tone. Yet, this hellish packet of nothing but patronizing pretentiousness gave him the hotline for the hospital and left it at that. Big words and strange hyphenated phrases made him feel queasy. He just needed someone to talk to, and even the paper could be wrong about something. It said so itself. An uncharacteristic anger once again boiled within him, and he tossed the papers away from him like a dirty tissue.

They hit the glass and knocked it off the edge of the counter. Water splattered all over the tile (the glass was surprisingly still in tact despite the fall) and his feet tingled at the sudden sensation. He managed to quickly keep the spilled water from soaking into the paperwork he had left out. Not even his fastest dodge for towels could save some of the less important papers from being ruined. He cursed under his breath, although switching cable providers wasn't as much a priority as being able to read and reread his stupid results.

Lead feet carried him from the kitchen to the living room and he stopped there. A pause. A moment to stare at the sun glinting through the vertical blinds on his window. The sun was already rising. Leo couldn't help but feel curious at just how much time he had indeed wasted staring at this dent in his wall. He almost felt compelled to do it again.

Classes were again today. His feet padded softly to the bathroom to wash his face and freshen up, a task that normally toom only ten minutes but stretched into fifteen as he spaced out while getting the washcloth "damp". It dribbled by the time he snapped out of it. Almost as if it could've been its own faucet if it believed in itself as much as Leo did the power of denial.

_"Leo, Space Idiots has been on for hours! Can you at least change it to something else? Even Mikey left."_

_"Shh!"_

_"Leo-"_

_"Captain Ryan is about to meet the leader of the Fyseni, just, shhh!" He whipped around and glared at his younger brother, who clenched his fist and consequently, crumpled his comic.._

_"I don't understand why you even like that stupid thing. It's obvious what's going to happen. There's nothing new." Raphael grumbled. He cracked his neck from side to side and stared on at the cartoon in disgust. The sound of his bones cracking ricocheted off the concrete walls. The only other sound that seemed to pierce through the lair was the dripping of a sewer pipe and Captain Ryan's heroic voice. It made Leo's skin crawl._

_"Could you do that somewhere else?"_

_"Do what? This?" He smirked before smashing his knuckles into an open palm._

_All three of his massive knuckles cracked and popped and snapped. The sound echoed off the walls even louder this time, an unescapable noise now making Leo feel gradually more uncomfortable. Almost on edge._

_"Stop it."_

_Crack._

_"Raph, I said-"_

_Crack._

Hot water hit Leo's face and he felt a rather shockingly cold shiver run down his spine. Weak hands gripped the edge of the sink and looked on at his face. A faded white scar ran just above his mouth that he quietly touched and pondered over. He looked so tired. How much sleep had he even gotten? He felt more and more ill as the days wore on, and here he was, looking at this pathetic reflection. Weakness that called off classes at least twice in the past month for nightmares he didn't even bother explaining to Splinter.

"You're fine, Leo." He whispered. His eyes drew out of focus momentarily. Then, "You're not like this. You're not...you're a sensei now."

_Just a soldier running away from his battle._

Shaking his head, "Get it together. Just...forget." It was almost like begging some sort of other being within himself to do it. God knew he couldn't anymore.

He dried off his dripping features. No point in keeping the kids waiting and giving parents the frustration of finding somewhere else for their kids to go. A shaky smile forced it's way onto his face and he found himself practicing making it look less sleepy as he dressed. Before leaving the apartment, he took one last look into the kitchen. Somehow, he had managed to leave the water glass on the floor.

\----------------------------------

Mikey tugged as hard as he could at the stove, eventually feeling the hunk of metal move. A squeak and low rumble made him hesitate. This kind of labor wasn't his specialty, but having Donnie here was making it easier. Neither of them were good at heavy lifting, but two terrible heavy lifters would equate to one good heavy lifter as Don had said with a shrug. Almost an hour later and all the big pieces of wreckage had been moved out of the way, and now the stove was being put back into place and secured.

The investigation had ended a few days ago. The police said they'd update him if they found anything, but according to them, "A few other cases of this have already occurred, so it makes it harder. Install some security cameras next time."

So Donnie installed security cameras. Mikey didn't really know how to use them all that well. The concept of turning a camera on but never turning it off seemed foreign to him, so he liked to dance in front of the camera whenever he could and play back the footage to see how good he looked. Just thinking about it, he looked around the room for one of those security cameras that Donnie had installed. He smiled right at the lens.

"Mikey. You're slacking."

"Oh! Sorry." He quickly adjusted the weight in his sweaty hands. His arms shook with the pure strain of having to hold the edge of the stove, but eventually Don had a thick wood block slid under the broken side.

"Done?" Mikey prodded through an exhausted wheeze.

"Done. Let go and let me see." Don said. His eyes grazed over the appliance the moment Mikey let go, then nodded and determined it was safe. "Should be fine Mikey. Let me know if it's not working though, it should be, but if it breaks, you know-"

"Call the professor!" Mikey winked with a grin as bright as the skyline.

Don laughed, "I left you my office hours on the fridge so you know when, but if its another emergency like last week..." He stopped and his eyes grew dark with a sadness he had thought he was already over. "Call the police first, then Raph."

Mikey seemed to have a lot on his mind all of a sudden. His freckled cheeks sank a little and in an instant it was like the world seemed to spin on a different axis for Michelangelo. He grabbed a can of soda off one of the counters behind him and popped the tab. He closed his eyes as he sipped it, mind reeling with sudden thoughts and worries that he too had thought he left behind after the investigators left.

"Donnie...you think they're going to get the people that did this, right?"

"Yeah, Mikey, of course," He said through a small sigh. He wiped some "They said there were other cases, right? So, statistically, that raises the chances of them finding the guys that did it. They'll catch them. Don't worry."

The words he said felt so foreign and so wrong. The statistics matched up, but he couldn't deny that something about it felt very, very wrong. The fact that multiple businesses had been utterly destroyed was enough to put him off, but they were all mutant run, and this was uncomfortable in a way that made a cold chill ease onto his shoulders. Targeted violence had been happening for a while, they all knew that, it just never really hit that close to home before.

"But I have to buy new chairs and replace windows, yo. That's a lot of money..." Mikey elaborated.

"Mikey, most vandalisms like this are like that. I didn't see the other cases, but-"

"But what about that?"

Mikey pointed to the wall in the dining area. Despite several minutes of them scrubbing at it when Donnie had first arrived, graffiti still stained the shop and stared down at them and anyone else who came in angrily. Don felt uncomfortable staring at the symbol. A hand with an exclamation point for a pinky was a rather artsy and complicated choice, and as such made him feel complicated, but he couldn't help but notice how the symbols were sprayed everywhere. Some were rough, most were neat. The one on the wall behind Mikey and on sections of the floor must've been done with a pre-made stencil. His gut turned.

"I don't know."

Those three words were the worst things that Donnie could ever say. Especially when it was a blatant white lie. Still, he managed to put on a smile for him and ask if he would want to repaint the walls to cover it. It was the only option they really had to cover the mess that it was.

"You can't afford paint on top of the furniture, Mikey. I'll go get it, just tell me the color."

"Donnie, I don't know...what about the floor?" Mikey asked. His voice was quiet and yet still held his usual panicked undertone when talking about how to fix the wreckage. It was clearly still one of the most overwhelming tasks for him, even if it was over halfway done and the easy stuff was all that was left.

He swallowed and scratched his nose, "I'll fix it, but first let me go get some paint, okay?" A pin could've dropped in the room. He had raised his voice ever so slightly and the tell-tale shake in his tone had made Mikey suspicious.

"Donnie...are you okay? You don't sound so goo-"

"I'm fine, Mikey. Paint color. Please." His eyes begged, now starting to look desperate.

"...I don't remember."

Donnie gave a large and exaggerated sigh. His eyes could have rolled into the next year if he had done it just a little longer. He wasn't entirely surprised that his disorganized and flighty brother didn't know the color of the walls. Although when he thought about it, he wasn't sure that he would remember either. He rushed into the back of the kitchen and pulled out Mikey's file box, hoping that the answer would miraculously be in there somewhere, but it wasn't. This also didn't surprise him. He would have to color match it.

Quickly walking back out from the kitchen and towards the wall again, he found himself instinctively looking away from the graffiti. It was so contorted and foreign, but somehow felt familiar to him.

Where had he seen it before?

"Did you get it at Home Depot?"

A quiet nod, and Mikey opened his mouth to say more, but Donnie flung himself on the chance to leave and think to himself. He needed to worry on his own without someone hanging over his every breath. Even a Home Depot employee would be better than Mikey gunning him down.

A statement, "I can work with that. I'll be back."

Mikey's reluctant wave and smile goodbye while allowing his brother to leave (despite the clear concern) made Donnie feel like the worst brother. As he pushed the door open with his arm and trudged into the autumn cold, he could feel his heart pounding in his head. Raph would have to know something by now, there was no way in hell he was going to let the department force him out of the case. He started down the street to the hardware store, eyes fixed on the sidewalk but thumbs tapping away at his T-Phone.

**Do you know anything about Mikey's yet?**

Send.

Stenciled graffiti. Massive damage. Multiple cases of vandalism. It felt like he had just stepped his feet into something he shouldn't have. He pulled his coat closer around his shoulders and crossed the street with a fragile hope that maybe Raph would have bootlegged the answers.

\----------------------------------

Luckily enough for Raphael, there was something of a laziness in the department over Mikey's case. It only took him a few days before he was able to prod around successfully enough to get something, without Morgan's help. Although, Morgan was proving to be more and more of a pain. He took a long sip of an energy drink, rubbed his tired eyes, and tapped his cheeks in hopes that he would wake up soon. The papers he was looking through were endless and contained nothing even close to useful to him, not to mention that every time someone walked past he had to close the case file and look like he was busy doing something else important. It was Morgan that ruined it for him though.

"Hamato. Someone's been complaining about missing case files. I hate to accuse you, but," Before he could react, she snatched the manila folders from his desk and opened a few. "You appear to be the culprit. How shocking."

His eyes narrowed. "Don't."

"I have to. You know the rules."

"Lewis, I need to know." His eyes pleaded in a strange way while still showing how ready he was to punch her in the jaw and take back what he felt belonged to him. It felt uneasy.

"I..." A deep sigh. "I can't. You know I can't. Not only will I get in trouble, but you will. It's better if you just let them do it, and then you find out when they do, right?" She tried to be encouraging, a smile touching the corners of her lips, but he only seemed to get angrier.

"They don't know what they're doing. I do. I know how much that place meant to Mikey, I should be the one to beat the shit out of whoever did this to him."

"But it wasn't just your brother, it was-" She paused. Her eyebrows were furrowed in a frustration that had been boiling up inside of her and suddenly she had to let it settle down before she said too much to set him off. "Let it go. Unless you want to be put on traffic duty, I'd stop for good. Got it?"

He stood up. His fists twitched as if he didn't know what to do with them. She began to feel a gradual sense of fear rise up in her at the mutant now shooting daggers with the electricity in his green eyes. His breathing was strained and he looked like he was trying so hard not to burst, so she stepped out of his way. He didn't move though. He just turned back towards her.

"I'm not going to stop until I find them. You wouldn't understand because you don't know what it's like for him to work harder than all of you and get it ripped away! I don't care if the same thing happens to me, I can take that risk!"

He shoved past her with the force of a boulder. He physically shook, but she noticed from a distance that the farther away he got, the more he seemed to calm down. She shook her head.

"Idiot! Fine, go risk your career..." Morgan grumbled, crossing her arms over her chest.

A thought passed through her mind as she watched him disappear around the corner towards the break room in a hurry. Something rather familiar. The feeling of losing things she had worked so hard for was something hard to have to remember. She blinked, then shook it off with a shrug, trying to force stale memories from the broken cycle in her head away.

Like a broken record, she remembered what Raphael said as she crossed the dimly lit room and headed down shallow steps towards the file cabinets at the base of the stairwell. Morgan bit her lip in deep thought.

_I can take that risk._

She tried to get her begrudging partner's words out of her head. She tried to pretend she didn't understand. That she wasn't a little kid willing to risk anything and everything to get answers. But she didn't put the file back into the cabinet. She felt some sort of strings pulling at her, and she hated the way it felt. Maybe if she did something else, she'd be distracted enough to forget their conversation. 

She had cases to clear from her desk anyway. Cases of people who needed her just as much. That's why she put on the badge, that's why she risked everything for it. She climbed back up the stairs and plopped down at her desk, looking at the digital alarm clock neatly placed in the corner of her space. One of her other case files was stored in a little bin next to her monitor, and she grabbed it instinctively. She opened the manila folder in her tan hands and tried to remember what she was fighting for.

It was the only non-mutant case she'd had in months. It was a he said-she said case. As routine as it could get. She had gotten a hold of text messages of the girl, ready to shout rape if he didn't take her to prom. She still had some investigating to see if the evidence had any truth and held up as accurate but the case was almost open and shut. Open and shut...unlike everything else.

She sighed and closed her eyes. Rubbing her temples before she sat up, she could feel herself about to regret the move she was about to make. Raph had most likely run upstairs. To the roof.

She bit her lip and looked at the clock again before pushing away from her desk, gathering her things, and slipping into the copy room quietly. She still had five weeks paid vacation since she started working for the NYPD.   Technically speaking, that gave her five weeks. On her time. Not on the NYPD's.

She already had enough dirt on the file from a pal of hers in Hate Crimes. She could feed Raph a little information. And her looking into it made it easy to deny any personal entanglement, rather than with Raph. She drummed her fingers slowly and methodically on her wrist as she waited for the last detective to finish making copies. They looked at her rather curiously, but she smiled toothlessly and hoped to displace the suspicions.

Carefully, she pulled papers from the manilla folder with Mikey's report and began copying each paper. Quickly, but just slowly enough that the people outside wouldn't look suspicious of her if they saw her flying from paper to paper. She frowned at each copy she made, shoving it into the already stuffed folder. This was ridiculous. There was procedure and duty. It had to be by the book.

\----------------------------------

"Hamato." He moved away from punching the air vent to her as she waved the folder at him. She walked him the small box of evidence and handed it to him. "You might think I don't understand. That I didn't have to work hard to get where I am. But I did. Maybe not as hard as you but I understand that need. But if you're gonna do this, don't be dumb."

She plopped the cardboard box in front of him, seeing the way his eyes widened in surprise at her. "What's your angle?" He glared, cracking his bruised knuckles.

"I don't have one," She frowned. "Just trust me on this. That's a big word for your age, I know, but if you're going to handle this you can't do it alone. You'll get your ass handed to you."

"Please." He snorted, waving her away.

"Get your head out of your ass for two damn seconds and think about it Hamato. They already know you have personal connections. They're watching you." She glared, pointing at him, and then to the box. "Those are all copies of documents. Not directs. If you're going to be a dumbass, at least do it with these."

He stared for a while. The wind picked up in the evening glow and tossed his badge around. It smacked his now unclenched fist. He looked away from her intense gaze, then down at the box.

"Thanks. Sorry." Somewhere through his brooding silence, more than just those two words spoke to her, but she blocked them. She pursed her lips at his angsty teenage attitude. How typical.

"Well, if that's all you need, then I'll be off." She mumbled through closed lips and pulled the collar of her own jacket up to cover her cold neck. Just before she opened the door to the stairwell again, she felt the same strings tugging at her again. She glared at the concrete beneath her feet, shook her head in defiance, then pushed forward. Feeling guilty would have to wait for another day.

The door shut behind her, though halfway between a slam and firm tug. Raph sat down on the rough rooftop terrain he had grown so familiar with and pulled the lid off the box. He had been expecting it to be empty, or maybe just a sick office prank. Instead it was full of documents, loaded with folders, and right at the top she had been nice enough to leave him a highlighter and a red Sharpie. He exhaled in disbelief.

"Thanks..."


	9. Accidents Happen

Heat rushed up into Michelangelo's face as he pushed another pizza onto the worn rack. His forehead was covered in sweat, utterly drenched, but the place smelled heavenly. It took more than simple restraint not to eat what he had been making for the past several hours. He was hosting a re-opening in the evening to celebrate the refurnishing of the place after the vandalism. Yet, still no news on who had done it. He kept his head up high, but deep in his gut he felt a resounding worry bounce around.

The walls in the dining area were a nice bright color and covered all of the graffiti from before. His brothers had even managed to pitch in to get him new tiling to cover the old stuff that had been destroyed. The restaurant looked nicer than before, and in his excitement, he had added new festive pizzas to the menu. Halloween Hangover, with a masterfully made vodka sauce that he had only just attempted and succeeded at, would have to be his personal favorite, and was the one he had just pushed into the fires of the stove.

He leaned back against the counter and looked around, smile fading only slightly. He felt so lonely here. It didn't usually hit him this strongly, but with no customers and the stress of the last two weeks, he felt especially pressed. He laughed a little, as if the chuckles themselves would push away the frustration.

He left the kitchen and softly stepped into the dining area. The smell of fresh paint still hit his nose rather strongly, but made him happy. The pictures on the wall were eclectically arranged and he liked the way they looked against the dark red splash of color. He stared out the large windows into the street. Life moved on, and consequently, so did the people. Still, he noticed people staring into his shop and giving him looks. Mothers held their children a little closer as they passed by foxes and birds peacefully living their lives.

As if by instinct, he hurriedly walked towards the shop door and unlocked it. His head poked out while his foot kept the door open.

"Little Ninja's is having a reopening at 7:00 tonight, dudes! Everyone is welcome!" He grinned, catching the attention of a few mutants who seemed to turn the thought over in their mind. As for the people, they kept walking. Typical for New Yorkers, he knew, but the fact that he had caught some attention was good. At least so he hoped.

A man in a black hoodie stopped just at the edge of his property, seeming alarmed as he stared at Mikey. His hood was half pulled up over dark curly locks, and his almost black eyes looked on at him in surprise. "Hey, buddy."

"Yeah? You coming to the reopening?" Mikey's freckles seemed to smile as he greeted him, holding out a hand for him to shake. The man declined by pretending not to notice.

"No, I'm wondering. Wasn't this place wrecked like a week ago?"

"Yeah, but we fixed it up!"

"Oh." He said, scratching his nose. "Didn't they find out who did it?"

Mikey hesitated. "No. But they will, don't worry."

He scoffed and shoved his hands in his pockets. "I wouldn't put your money on it champ. People don't like your type. The NYPD ain't no different."

"Well, my brother's in the-"

"It don't matter. Make sure you close your blinds and lock the door at night. They're gonna be back." He frowned. "And no police are gonna be there to help, you can count your bills on that."

Mikey was quiet for a while watching the man in the hoodie leave before stepping back into the restaurant. Maybe that's why there was a feeling of less anticipation. Nobody was going to come because they thought he was put out of business. The strangest feeling of agreement struck a chord with him. He wondered if the NYPD was really like the man in the hoodie had said. They seemed to treat Raph alright, or at least, Raph never complained about anything.

Would the police really be thick skulled enough to not look into his case ever again?

Just as he was going to head back into the kitchen to get started on another batch of dough for relaunch, Leo rushed in through the door, face pale and breathing ragged. He looked as if he had been running for actual miles, and his forehead was drenched in sweat. He staggered at the door and pressed his hand up against the wall to regain his balance, but didn't bother to resteady himself much before quickly attempting to stand up again.

"Leo? Leo, dude, you look like you're going to throw up!" Mikey panicked.

"Don't touch me!" The former leader coughed before shoving his younger sibling out of the way with his shoulder and running for the bathroom in the back. "Don't look at me, don't-"

The door slammed behind him. Mikey flinched. He scampered across the dining area immediately towards the bathroom, but the door was locked. He knocked harshly on the door, but there was no response. Just raspy breathing and the sound of his brother sliding down the wall as he sat on the floor.

"Leo! Leo!"

_His hands tugged at both children, eventually pushing the two rebellious youths apart. The fury in their eyes as they punched and kicked, the restraint and discipline in their stances reduced to street fighting--nothing could've stopped him from seeing how familiar it all was. The only difference anybody could easily point at was that the fight had broken out between Paxson, a human who previously never seemed to have a problem with the class he was put into, and Jerome, a newly transformed mutant, who had been called a derogatory term and wanted to defend his honor. He couldn't blame him, but at the same time..._

_For a brief moment, he wondered if this was what Splinter saw out of him and Raph when they would wrestle on the dojo floor as children._

_"Stop! Now!" He began to unravel as he shouted. He felt more and more on edge as he continued to keep their clawing hands apart. "Sit to the side! No more sparring, I'll call your parents."_

_This seemed to encourage an immediate stop from both students. Jerome kneeled at the carpet and bowed his head in shame, but Paxson hardly showed a flicker of the same emotion, almost seeming to smile. For a moment, it would appear that Paxson thought he won, but Leo's anger didn't simmer down. This made him boil longer._

_His hands still shook as he stared at the rest of the class. They all seemed to agree with his judgement, and from the hall he could see that Splinter had come out to see what the arguing and shouting was about. Everything was alright now, there was no more fighting, and yet, the edge that Leo had felt was still present in every possible way. He let out a low and calming breath. Somewhere, deep within his head, he could feel the last threads within his mind start to fray._

_"We are all welcome here. All of us. If you can't accept that, then you can ask your parents to take you home." He said. Paxson's once rod-tight posture slumped a little, smile fading little by little._

_"I think that'll be enough for today. Everybody...get your things together." He said and left the mass of children to their individual tasks. His eyes lifted towards his father once he got close to the hallway. The rat stroked his beard, deep in thought._

_"They were familiar, yes?" He spoke softly, a mischievous smile pairing with the glint in his dark gaze._

_"Yes. I mean, yeah. Father." He sputtered, rubbing his tired eyes._

_"You and Raphael used to fight like that over the remote control. I recall biting and scratching. He called you...a tyrant?"_

_"Yeah," He laughed. A quick gulp of water from a water bottle he had placed in the office soothed his sore throat. Yet still his hands shook, making a tiny dribble of water spilled into his lap. "Ah...I should watch them. Make sure they don't go at it again."_

_"I will go. You could use some rest." Splinter suggested, already halfway out the hallway before his son could protest._

_Leo nodded at the retreating and unattainably composed form of his elderly father. From his place in the open office, he could hear the old rat commanding children to fix their stances even as they changed and put their shoes on. He chuckled again, the shaking in his hands seeming to die off if for a moment. He felt strange, like a world somewhere else had spliced with his own and was making him tremble like a small animal in the dark. He leaned back in the rolling office chair. Slow sips of water seemed to quell his nerves little by little, but nothing would get rid of them altogether. For a moment, he wondered if he was having a heart attack, but the thought was ridiculous enough for him to laugh off silently._

_After fifteen minutes, he finally came out of the office and decided he was recovered enough to deal with children. However, he found that once again, Will was the only one left and was alone in the dojo waiting with Splinter for his sister. Leo frowned, placing his water bottle on the worn blue bench by the window. He took a seat next to the quiet student he had only barely gotten to know over the past month or so._

_"No Max yet?"_

_"No..." Will frowned, suddenly perking up when the door of a taxi across the street opened. A flash of red hair triggered a grin across his face, and in turn, one across Leo's tired lips. "I mean, yes! There!"_

_Max seemed more frazzled than she ever had before. A bag was slung around one shoulder with what appeared to be her crumpled work uniform still poking out the flap. She spoke to the driver through the passenger's side window and seemed to beg for him not to leave. Her eyebrows met in an angry pout before she fished an extra two dollars out of her wallet and shoved them into his face angrily. She flew into the dojo with her hair a windy, tussled mess, but seemed to be at least somewhat more together than she had been while talking to the driver. She let out a thick sigh and gave Leo a look that would've explained her day if he knew anything about her beyond her job and, apparently, her life skills._

_Will immediately ran to his sister in a joyful and relieved hop. His backpack was strapped on neatly, a miracle that Splinter must've produced, and all of his things were gathered inside and neatly zipped into the pockets. It would seem that even if Max didn't have her stuff together, Will somehow managed to, with or without outside help._

_"My manager wouldn't let me off," She grumbled, now fishing through her wallet again and rubbing Max's already soft and messy hair. "I did more than the expected work, took all the calls, he just wanted to hold some stupid meeting about company morale." She laughed half-heartedly, appearing to struggle to censor certain words since her little brother stood in front of her._

_"You got everything, bud?" She finally asked, a question only coming after what appeared like an eternity of her trying to get her things together._

_"Yep!" Will smiled, standing up on his tip-toes and knocking his heels together playfully._

_"Good. Here." She held out several wrinkled ten-dollar bills to Leo, who managed to smile and take them with the grace he had been lacking for several days. "Sorry about all of that. That should cover the deposit for the other lessons, right?" Leo thumbed through the messy gathering of bills as Splinter walked back towards the office._

_Like an arrow whizzing through the air, a loud cracking noise pierced the quiet and made him lose his count. He froze for a moment, stretched his neck back and forth, then began recounting. Max was cracking her knuckles, one by one, trying to pass the time he supposed. With each repeating crack, he felt his ability to count decline. Still, he managed to find an extra bill amongst the rest and handed it back to her rather harshly._

_"Ah, yeah, I'm always bad at catching that kinda stuff. The rest is good though, right?" She asked._

_"Y-Yeah." He mumbled, ocean eyes blinking as if he were being blinded. His focus failed with every sound of a snap that played in his head again and again._

_He closed his eyes and attempted to swallow the lump in the back of his throat and the ball of memories now forming in his mind. The feeling of pain so immense that he could never forget where or when or why it came to him flooded through his head like something from a horror movie, and his breathing hitched. There, in-between the recesses of his mind, he could see everything and nothing all at once, and a sharp stinging pain shuddered through his arms and legs. He felt it almost like it were a mechanical movement of pain and sensation, hopeless to stop it until it did it itself._

_Max kept snapping the knuckles on her other hand as she stuffed her wallet into her pocket. Somewhere deep within him, a voice spoke to him as his eyes focused on her knuckles, consistently snapping, a rhythm that seemed so planned. Her voice seemed to stretch on and on for light-years ahead of him, almost belligerently, and he could almost feel himself almost scream. Instead, in the matter of a few moments, he disconnected._

_"So, I'll need to go-"_

_Leo drew his katana from behind him, shaking furiously like a dry leaf. Somewhere between Max putting away her things and a black Sedan passing by the dojo, there was a deep and impenetrable curtain drawn in front of his thoughts. He could hardly sense himself or any of his actual feelings as he saw the expression in her eyes change from a calm but disorganized state to a rather worried and anxious desperation--maybe even fear. He didn't really acknowledge that he was holding the blade so close to her, or that he was pointing it at both her and her much more vulnerable and terrified brother. He could barely process the words that she was saying. Only the movement that her lips made seemed close enough to touch._

_Her wide eyes turned away and she nodded at him grimly, an affirmation that she wouldn't be coming within twenty feet of him anytime soon. Swiftly pushing Will out the door and herself out into the breeze, Leonardo felt his soul burst like a rotten fruit. He stood as a statue would, watching them leave, but never moving more than just to turn the sharpened danger around in his hand and eventually let it clatter to the ground. Even several moments after the taxi left he felt his tense shoulders remain where they were, practically meeting with his neck in some kind of sick love affair. Splinter said something from over by the office, probably the wise words of an old man as always, but he couldn't hear anything other than dark and mysterious garble of the man in his mind. He was spinning._

_Like a switch, he seemed to flicker between the spliced worlds in his mind. Within moments of passing from the void into the world of the living, he knew his now trembling legs needed to go somewhere. Somewhere he knew, but far away enough where he couldn't be bothered or hurt. Somewhere to breathe. Anywhere but here._

_Faster than he could grab his coat, he opened the dojo door and ran down the street, the wind hitting his cheeks like needles.Tears threatened to burst from his eyes from the cold, but he didn't feel any need to stop or accommodate for them. He moved almost robotically, each stride a thoughtless action that propelled him further, but never really making him think about where it was he was going to go. He just needed to go. He just let his mind keep spinning and made his legs keep going._

Mikey knew that the way that Leo was locking himself in the bathroom and refusing to respond wasn't good, but he wasn't entirely sure how he was supposed to respond to it. He knocked a few more times, but there was still no response. One time, he thought he heard a sob, but there wasn't anything that he could separate from Leo's gasps and the rare sounds of his crying. Eventually, he walked away from the bathroom, and grabbed the phone. He didn't really know who he should be calling. He glanced at Donnie's office hours. He would be just out of class.

After hearing the dial tone only a couple of times, "Mikey? What's up?"

"Donnie, something's wrong. With Leo. He's here, I don't know why. I-I'm scared." He babbled.

"What do you mean? Slow down, what did he do?"

"He came in and locked himself in the bathroom. He won't talk to me, he's just breathing. I think he's crying. I don't know what's going on, please." Tears started to well up in his light eyes. "Help him. I-I can't."

There was a deadly silence on the other end of the line. Then, "I'm on my way. Make sure he doesn't leave."

The call ended, and so did Mikey's breakdown. He needed to try to be there for Leo, whatever way he could. He hurried back to the door, checking first to make sure that he could still hear his brother's ragged breathing and that the door was still locked. He almost breathed in relief, but remembered that whatever this was...wasn't over.

"Leo, if you're in there...Donnie's coming to help," He said almost apologetically. "I want to help too...can you talk?"

Another long pause of silence only broke for his older brother's desperate gasps for air. Mikey's courage failed little by little. There was some sort of determination in him that beat furiously in his chest with each weakened breath Leo took.

"It's gonna be okay, bro...whatever it is you're thinking. You just gotta breathe, or you're gonna hyper-late." He mumbled bleakly, not sure if he had used the right word, but hoping that Leo at least knew what he meant. "I have a vegetarian pizza cooking in the oven. I know you like those. I think they're nasty, b-but you should have some."

A long silence again, although Leo had stopped gasping this time, instead coming down to steady breaths occasionally interrupted by a cough. Mikey sniffled, rubbing away baby tears with his arm.

"You're gonna be okay, Leo. We're gonna be okay."

\----------------------------------

Don's feet didn't hurry out of his office beyond a simple jog. He didn't rush past people or shove them out of the way. In fact, he could feel the wheels in his head turning more than he could a need for him to get Mikey as fast as possible. He knew that was bad of him, but he had barely put a dent in his work and was incredibly behind for the semester. The way that Mikey had sounded made him feel tired just thinking about it. He had to reduce his office hours just to keep Mikey feeling alright since "the incident," and now here he was, leaving his office when he still had papers to grade and things he wanted to get done but likely wouldn't.

As he left the building, he passed the library and felt his heartbeat jump a few beats. He cursed and sped up his pace. She was probably eating alone again and was probably going to be there late. He wanted to go in and talk, but his priorities and knowing that it would make him an even worse brother to do that kept him straight ahead.

Once he was out of the building, he made a left turn directly into the bike lane and adjusted the strap of his bag mid-stride so it wouldn't slide down his shoulder so much. Crossing from the bike lane to the opposite street was technically jaywalking. He didn't care.

Little Ninja's was so far from here that it would take him a while, but Mikey had picked the right person to call. He knew that Raph had later hours than Donnie, and he also knew that Donnie was the one to call if something was wrong and nobody knew what to do. Still, it prodded at Donnie.

_"Come on Donnie, you gotta make time for them. You're still a team."_

He frowned, remembering April's words. She was right. He knew that. But still he felt like they should know that his life had to move on now. He was independent. Even if being busy was killing his sleep schedule, making him forget to eat, and ruining all chances for him to stop by the store to get groceries, it was something to do that had advanced beyond the call of building simple machines and fixing broken appliances. He had the time for meet-ups here and there, but the constant need for Donnie was starting to chip away at his ability to teach properly and actually do things like he needed to.

After a few more minutes of walking and avoiding people equally in a rush, he reached Little Ninja's and pushed the door open with his arm. He hung his bag across the back of a chair and joined Mikey in the back, a frown transforming his face.

"Is he still in there?" He motioned towards the door, seeing his brother nod slowly.

"I managed to get him some food though. Veggies." He said with a grimace.

Donnie's brow raised and he gestured for Mikey to get out of the way. From his shirt sleeve he produced a universal lock pick. He didn't say a word to explain himself or why he still carried tools on him, only unlocking the door and swinging it open to reveal their eldest brother huddled under the sink with his eyes closed, still chewing on a stick of celery. Don's eyes softened.

"Leo," He called. His brother had seemed to calm down from the state that Mikey had previously described, but now he looked utterly ashamed. "Mikey called. What are you doing here?"

His brother's eyes went dark as he mumbled something unheard under a ragged breath. Donnie stood still for a while before getting down on his knees. "Leo, it sounded pretty bad from what Mikey told me. What's going on?"

"I can't."

"Can't...?" Donnie prompted, making a circular motion with his hand in asking him to continue.

"Can't breathe. Can't speak."

A thought crossed the genius turtle's mind. This seemed familiar, but in the very-recent-past-way. He reached his hand out, gently, slowly, not looking directly at him.

"Leo, it's okay. We're not going to hurt you." He coaxed, words that bounced off Leo's ears.

"No." He groaned, letting out a half-sob. "It's not you."

"What do you mean?" Don drew his hand back cautiously.

"Its me. Its all me."

"What is?"

"The nightmares, the memories, the thoughts." Leo coughed, expression flickering between a glare and fear.

"Leo, I...you're not making sense." Donnie said slowly, although things were beginning to click ever so delicately. "I think you should go see Splinter."

"No. I'm just going to hurt him too." He groaned. He rubbed his fingers over a scar on his arm softly, but in just a way that seemed to give off the impression that he didn't really believe that it was there.

Things sat in the stillness for a while, only the hum of the lights in the bathroom and the cars moving outside proving to be the noises that drowned out the sounds of their breathing. Finally, Donnie offered his hand again, this time in resignation.

"You don't have to see Splinter, but at least come out from there."

These words, too, felt strange on his tongue. His older brother, known to be the staple of their team for so long, was cowering under the sink and had been eating fresh vegetable from a paper plate. Not only was this a clear sign of sickness, but it was so out of the ordinary that he felt the need to call Splinter himself, if not just to calm his rising worries that Leo might be in a state of mind similar to something they had seen several years back.

_"He's going to kill me..." Leo whispered into the air. His eyes had dilated and he was shivering in the cold of the sewer tunnels, and yet Donnie still wasn't entirely convinced that something was fully wrong._

_"Leo, what do you mean?"_

_"He's going to kill me, Donnie, I saw it!" He screamed. His voice cracked and the horrifying noise echoed off the stone for what felt like miles._

_"Leo...you need to calm down. Let's go see Splinter, okay?"_

_"No!"_

"No." He said this so firmly that it was almost as if he had put his foot down on the situation, but the situation itself was so flimsy that he couldn't honestly do it. "I'm going to hurt you too."

"Leo..." Donnie sighed. Now he was starting to get scared. "Please...at least tell me what happened?"

"No."

The genius stood up, then walked out of the bathroom, leaving the door swung open and quietly hooking around the kitchen counter to the phone that Mikey had made the same call on. Just as he was about to call Splinter, he hesitated. Leo likely knew what he was doing, and if he was as unstable as Donnie thought he was, then this was a bad idea. He put the phone down, trying to go through every motion in his mind that he could think of that might help his older brother, but he found none. Splinter would need to be here, or Leo would have to agree to get help.

Suddenly, as if an answer to his unspoken prayers, Leo left the bathroom and tossed his paper plate into the trashcan by the exit. Mikey moved towards him to stop him from leaving, but Leo jerked his shoulder away, unintentionally stumbling into the wall on the other side.

"I can handle myself."


	10. The Beginning

When Raphael woke the next morning, he had a migraine the size of Jersey--no, bigger, actually. After fumbling around for a bottle of ibuprofen, he sat up and took the meds rather reluctantly, blinking in the dim light of his apartment. It was early morning, but he didn't have to go into work. Surprisingly enough, he had been able to secure a day off, one to sort through all the papers in the overflowing cardboard box leaned up against the opposite wall of his bedroom. He stared at it for a moment, briefly spacing out and thinking of all the work he still had to attempt to do with so little leads. Despite the fact that Morgan had gathered so much material, the files were pretty blank, save for a few helpful papers on suspects that had already been ruled out in other cases of mutant related incidents around Manhattan.

After crawling out of his sheets he picked up the box and shoved his way into his cramped kitchen. Discarding the lid by the sink, he pulled out an untouched file labelled "graffiti" and sat down on the couch, propping his feet up on the arm.

"Damn." He whispered, noting the amount of paperwork and sketches in the single manila folder. There were quite a few, all roughly containing the same sort of symbol, if not the exact same drawing of one, just with different backgrounds and notations scribbled around it.

The NYPD had appeared to sum it up to gang work according to what he could decode from their atrocious handwriting, and it made a lot of sense given the amount of symbols and the direct correlation with vandalism. He could easily recall the sheer amount of these symbols that hung around at Mikey's, but it would appear that the evolution of the symbol was what made the entire case so weird.

On multiple papers he saw something that sort of looked like the exclamation mark hand, but instead was a crudely 'sketched' hand with seven fingers that splayed out awkwardly like tentacles. There was no stencil work in the details, that was obvious enough, but as the photographs wore on, the more trademark figure he recognized became clear, quite literally. For a moment he wondered if maybe they had commissioned someone to make the stencil, but another report indicated that this sort of cross-checking had already been done across the general Manhattan area. Nobody had made the stencil, and online orders for a stencil like that were not able to be made without a walk-in.

They would've had to have made it themselves if they weren't so stupid to let the police find them by permanent business records.

He frowned and placed the photographs and post-it notes on his coffee table in a disorganized pile. He stared at the ceiling blankly, his mind reeling with theories that he couldn't anchor.

"They can't have done it without being seen at least once." He muttered and massaged his temple. "They only did a couple places, they're not smart enough to avoid being seen at least once. They weren't good at graffiti, they must have slipped up somewhere."

Although this was a pretty large assumption for him to make over what looked to be a highly trained New York gang, he still found himself looking back over the list of places affected, picking one off the top of the list, and tossing his jacket on lazily. It wasn't too early, so they were likely to be open by now, and even if they weren't, he could really go for breakfast.

A fifteen minute walk and a quick stop for his stereotypical "police bagel" found himself at the door of "Jay's Photography" a start-up studio that did photography for weddings and graduations and other special occasions. The advertisement on the window seemed to suggest that they were looking to do customizable portraits and the like. Considering the place had only been hit a little over a month ago, he had a great appreciation for what seemed to be a full recovery for them. Without knowing, he would've had no idea that they were the victim of a vandalism.

As he pushed the door open, a little bell jingled above the frame, alerting the clerk behind the counter. He was human, but after beginning to ask if Raph was there for an appointment or something-or-other, a short and stout squirrel with what looked like a beer belly pushed through the back door and gave one look at Raph before smiling and making broad and wide gestures for his desk clerk to stop.

"You're from the NYPD." The mutant spoke with a heavy blend of an accents that almost startled Raph, having expected something different, although he wasn't quite sure what. The squirrel gestured towards the badge hanging from the pocket of his jacket. Raph hadn't even noticed that he'd left it on from his last shift, and thus was now severely regretting it. "I heard Chief Daniels talk about his mutant cops, I didn't think he'd send one so late though. Is my case open again?"

Raph bit the inside of his cheek. "Well, Daniels didn't exactly send me. I'm here on personal business."

"Personal...business?" Jay asked, brow raising. "You want to purchase a portrait or something?"

"Not exactly."

"So you're here for...?"

"My brother's restaurant, sorta." He frowned, taking a small bite out of his bagel. Speaking through his food, "His whole place got destroyed. Graffiti everywhere. I wanted to ask a few questions about what happened here a month ago."

"Not as an officer?" Jay inquired, a small smile twitching at the corner of his lips. Not only had he caught onto Raph, but he was seemingly amused by it too.

Raph chuckled nervously. "I, uh...no?"

After a prolonged moment of tension, "No problem bud, in today's world we've gotta stick together. Come with me." Jay shrugged nonchalantly, waving his hand towards the studio door he'd come in through.

For how nervous the tough turtle was, he had hardly been expecting that kind of relaxed and open response that Jay gave him. There were various props scattered across the studio floor, some damaged and moved towards the corner, some shiny and seemingly freshly bought from a photography catalogue. Jay led him around various pieces of modern art towards the back wall where his desk and printer sat, although this printer sat right next to its decimated cousin in the trash. Jay chuckled sadly, gesturing towards the tragedy of a piece of equipment.

"The thing is, all those gun-wielding monsters smashed up a lot of my equipment. Tripods and lenses and shit. Why they left my PC, I'll never know." He plopped down in his desk chair and set his feet up on the edge of the desk. "What really bothered me was knowing how many were in here. Musta been like, ten or something."

"Ten? Wait, wait, guns?" Raph shook his head, utterly incredulous as he watched the mutant rip open a Twinkie from his desk drawer and nod as he chewed through his speech.

"They really didn't tell you did they?" Jay frowned. "I was here when the whole thing happened. Locked in the developing room. Some people still like that vintage feel, you know? I do those in that room over there and they pay like $50 extra for it."

He gestured towards a black door on the other side of the room which blended in perfectly with the rest of the environment. The knob to the developing room was incredibly small and as he approached and inspected it, he noticed that if he wanted to even try to use the knob, he could easily crush the metal in his oversized hands. There was a slot for a key lock, which he assumed Jay used from the other side, and after asking if he was allowed to open the door first, he checked the other end of the knob and found a rather secure system with more than one lock installed up the side, probably to keep an assistant from accidentally coming into the room and spoiling his developing work.

"Did you see anything?" Raph asked, shutting the door and looking the door up and down again.

"Nope. They didn't come for the developing room cause of the chemicals, you know. Boom!" He made a rather theatrical explosion movement with his hands and laughed boisterously, a couple crumbs flying off his bottom lip. "The door doesn't have a window, as you can see, cause the light ruins the photos. My security camera managed to catch some of it, but none of their faces. They were wearing those 'morph' suit things under some grey hoodies."

"You still have the footage?" Raph asked.

"You bet. NYPD told me to keep it just in case. Plus its a neat keepsake. Gotta tell your friends, you know?" Jay shrugged. He straightened his posture and struck the space bar on his keyboard, quickly typing in a rather long-winded password before lazily opening his security application.

After clicking on the icon and waiting several minutes for it to load, Jay scrolled through the last several days' security feeds before clicking on a date. Through the fuzzy camera feed, Raph could catch the figures in the dark lighting of the studio, only barely. The camera feed was exactly as he figured it was, utterly useless, but enough to determine that a few of the guys were actually holding guns and were doing exactly as had been reported in the paperwork. Their faces were indeed conveniently concealed, and they carried gym bags stuffed with extra equipment like sledgehammers, stencils, more spray paint, and items that he couldn't see quite clearly enough to discern from everything else.

"You gave them this footage, right?"

"Yeah." Jay said through a yawn. He crushed the Twinkie wrapper into the trashcan under his desk and he shrugged. "They said that it wasn't really helpful for the identities, but at least for what to be on alert for, I suppose."

"Thanks." Raph frowned, nodding at the footage and stepping away from the camera feed as Jay closed the application.

"So, any thoughts?" The mutant asked, smoothing back his ears and cracking his knuckles before pulling another Twinkie out of his drawer and ripping it open. Either Jay had quit smoking and needed a replacement, or this _was_ his cigarette.

"Nah. Not really." Raph sighed. "But thanks, this was helpful."

"Anytime," He smiled. "And tell you what, those other businesses? They'd probably help you out too. Knowing what's been going on around here lately, the vibe is super off in the community, yeah? We've got to stay protected."

"Yeah, sure." Raph nodded.

Those words felt strange on his mouth, almost insincere.

\-------------------------

Leaving the studio, Raph heard Jay's speech echo in his head, feeling a bit strange about them. He knew that Jay was right, but something still felt wrong. What was he not aware of? What were _they_ not aware of? He knew that mutant directed violence was something that happened, but was it just worse than he had the pleasure of knowing? He didn't want to feel stupid, but maybe he just hadn't seen too many cases lately.

He pulled out his phone and texted Morgan, wondering if maybe she had a copy of the footage that Jay had, something that was clearer or more usable. It was doubtful that she would actually help again, and he knew that. His short and concise text gave the very clear impression that he knew he was being a bother, but he defied the social construct anyways.

Just as he sent Morgan his 'please help me again' text, he got an updated one from Mikey. Feeling his heart race at first, he panicked for his little brother, but the intense usage of smiley face and food emojis indicated nothing negative like the last long bout of messages he had been sending back and forth to his demoralized brother, even after reopening Little Ninja's.

****Group Text to: You, Leo, Donnie, Mikey** **

****I was thinking we could do Thanksgiving this month?! Leo could bring Karai, and then I make the food, and maybe Donnie sees if April and Casey can fly back in time?!** **

Raph was the first one to see it, and he couldn't help but at least crack a smile at the enthusiasm behind the emoji-laced message. He stuffed his phone back into his pocket, wondering for a moment about Karai, April, and Casey. Extra invites. Come to think of it, he'd barely talked to Karai at all the past few months, and April and Casey even less because of their work.

Staring up at the morning sky, he felt a mixed nostalgia beat away at his heart, making him all soft and mushy on the inside. It was awkward and vulnerable, and mixed with the strange emotions from his moments with Jay, he wasn't sure if he liked it. Forcing his stoic expression back onto his face, he felt heavy with a vibe he couldn't think to describe quite yet, and he wasn't looking forward to coming back into work.

\-------------------------

"Well, Mikey wants to invite you guys for Thanksgiving."

"Thanksgiving? Have we ever even had a Thanksgiving together?" April asked mostly to herself, looking upwards as if their lost memories lay hidden in the ceiling fan of her apartment.

"Yeah, we did, right before you both left." Don smiled. "Casey burnt the turkey and the entire place smelled horrible until Christmas- when he burned the ham." He continued, listing the offenses off on his fingers as April rolled her eyes.

"That one, I remember." She laughed, running a hand over her cheek. "He tried, you have to give him credit for that. For someone who read all the instructions online and insisted on having no help, I'd say he did okay."

"April."

"Mm?"

"It was black. I've never seen something cooked that black. Not even by Mikey." He laughed.

Maybe it was poking fun at Casey that made this entire conversation easier to bear, or the idea that April and Casey would be home for the holidays, but he was enjoying himself more than usual on their Skype chat. He'd slowed down with grading things and he was becoming more than acclimated with life on the university now. The weather was getting more frigid, and although this definitely proved to be the most challenging and least favorite point of the year for him, something in his heart felt light enough to keep the stress from bearing too heavily on his shoulders for now.

"No, but really. How are you Donnie? You seem better than you were a couple weeks ago." April sighed, brushing her outgrown bangs out of her face.

"I guess you could say that."

"Meaning?"

"I mean, I still have stuff to grade and there's still things to be stressed about, and-"

"Oh come on." She rolled her eyes teasingly. "It can't be that bad."

"Like talking in front of a camera is so hard." He shot back.

She crossed her arms in front of her chest, raising an eyebrow with her characteristically dead-faced stare. "That bad, huh?" She seemed understanding, or at the least she came across that way as she had caught on to the anxiety dripping off his words. He let out a deep sigh and leaned back in his seat, running his hand over his head.

"I mean, I'm not reporting on the intricacies of Venetian politics or anything but, you know." His eyes trailed up to the ceiling, locked on the dim light fixture there. "I've got stuff. Leo's got his head in the drain right now, I think that's most of it. I told you about that it's just...I think it's really putting a damper on things right now. We really don't know how to help him, you know."

"You did tell Splinter, right?"

"Oh yeah, yeah. Of course." He laughed through a pained sigh. "It's just a matter of actually getting Leo to talk about what's going on in there. I don't think even Splinter can get through to him. I don't know who can to be honest, I'm just worried that it's PTSD."

"What about Karai?"

There was an uncomfortably long pause between the two of them as he blinked, then rubbed his sweaty palms on his knees. "Ah. Well. I've not contacted her in months. I think the only people she ever really stays in the loop with are Leo and occasionally Raph.I wouldn't be surprised if she hasn't already talked to Leo about it."

April brushed her overgrown bangs out of her face, seeming frustrated. "I don't know, Don. I'd seriously keep an eye on him. You know how tense things are right now better than I do."

"I do, I do." He noted, eyes tracing over his phone, which lay on the arm of the couch. "Maybe I'll try talking to him about it. I don't know."

"It's worth at least the sit-down." She mused, then, after a moment of awkwardly pungent silence, she tried to switch the subject as smoothly as she could. "Anything else you'd like to talk about?"

"Mm. Nah, not really."

April's stare became more intense and her eyes narrowed. She leaned in a little towards the camera, intently staring into it like he were directly in front of her. She pressed her lips together, then let out a slow and thoughtful hum. Just as she was beginning to begin to make him incredibly uncomfortable, she leaned back and gave a sharp nod of her head, facial expression slowly morphing back to normal.

"It's more than that. There's additional stress. I can't tell from what cause you're not here, but you're lying to me."

Don blinked once. Twice. Then shook his head incredulously. "Wait, what?"

"You're lying to me."

"No I'm not! That's it! Honestly as soon as the paperwork gets done most of the struggle will be over for me."

"Oh, I'm sure." She laughed, then sharpened her focus again. "But that's not everything. What are you hiding?"

"Nothing, I swear on my shell April."

She went quiet again, seemingly deeper in thought now than she had been before. She scratched the side of her jaw, then rubbed the bridge of her nose. As uncomfortable as this was making him, he put up with it for her sake. She liked to test her psychic abilities from long distances, and this was one of the best ways for her to do it, but as far as he could tell, she was terrible at it if she wasn't in front of the person--or turtle--she wanted to read.

"Okay, fine. But if you're hiding something from me, I will find it when we come home."

"You're coming home?" He smiled, face brightening. She hadn't quite given him an answer before, but she liked to keep her visits home a surprise from them until she actually showed up at the airport. It was her way of either completely screwing with them, or something that she and Casey both liked doing to get back at years and years of "incidents" with Mikey popping out from around corners as the notorious Dr. Prankenstein.

"Well, yeah, we-" Her nose crinkled in frustration as she realized her slip-up. "Oh screw you, Donatello. I'm hanging up."

"Too late." He chirped. The small 'bloop' on the other end of the line as she left the call made him chuckle in triumph. Then, his phone. Pulling up the group chat felt weird considering how little he even entered it. The messages were still extensively poisoned by Mikey's overexcited usage of food related emojis.

****Casey and April are coming. Plan for six for now.** **

Then, a glance at Leo's contact. There was something rather unnerving about the concept of trying to contact his brother after all this time. They had talked since the last incident, but it had been brief. Cold. He felt distant from his former leader in a way that he had never expected to feel as a teenager; in a way that the old Leo would never allow. A decaying Leo was so unlike him that it was scary.

How does one bring up mental illness without frustrating the sufferer? There was clearly a disturbance of some kind, but one he didn't and wouldn't ever have the training to name. He frowned, thumbs hovering over the keyboard, eyes staring blankly at Leo's contact name. He almost felt sick at the thought of phrasing it wrong. Not knowing what exactly was wrong made it all that much worse for him to try to deal with and get optimal results.

****Hey, are you-** **

He hit the backspace and shook his head. No that wasn’t right.

****Leo, I wanted to ask-** **

He grunted in frustration and laid his hand on his forehead, erasing the little he had typed up, that wasn’t much better.

****Can we talk-** **

That still felt wrong. He was at a loss for what to say. It used to be so easy to talk to Leo, the easiest out of all his brothers. But he felt like he was approaching a landmine buried under rice paper. He let out a sigh, letting the phone fall to his side as he leaned back on his chair.

Donnie glanced at the computer screen, where April’s face used to be and let out sad breath. He pulled up his cell and typed in his final attempt.

****Hey Leo, if you need to talk about anything, don't feel afraid to talk to me. I've been worried lately. Just want to talk.** **

Send.

Was that sincere enough? Too sincere? His mind was so jumbled at the thought of his brother's undiagnosed struggles that he couldn't even seem to handle a simple text without feeling overwhelmed with anxiety. He sighed and locked his phone. Donnie laid down his phone, shut his laptop, and shut off the lights to the living room on his way to bed.

April and Casey were coming home. Finally, something to look forward to.


End file.
